Crisis of Infinite Mirth!

From a bunker in beautiful potchester of the Bronx. It's electoral dysfunction. Now, here is your host, Tom Brennan.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Electoral Dysfunction, the show where comedians and experts debate the news of the week from the safety of a Zoom screen. I'm your host, Tom Brennan. Happy holidays. When this drops, I'll be flying into Newark Airport after a lovely week in the great state of North Carolina. Real America, as we call it. I'm in the Bronx, so I'm on the American mainland, so I'm technically outside the bubble.

I hope you're all enjoying your holidays. The week between Christmas and New Year is one of my favorite times of year, because it's the time to really reflect and pause. And if you're anything like me, when you reflect, you like to really dwell on the future and start to panic. And I brought two of my favorite people to dwell on the future and start to panic with. First up, you know him, you love him. He's a pundit at large. Robert George, Robert, how you doing? Happy holidays.

Happy holidays to you too, my friend. It's good to be here. Absolutely. And given we don't know how long we're going to be around, it's really good. We're between when we record this and when we post it. Who knows what could happen? This might be. Let's, you know, at the end of the show, we'll record our in memoriams, just in case.

And also joining us first time in the show, one of my favorite human beings. I've known her most of my life at this point. I was doing a math the other day. Friendly neighborhood astrologer, Ellie Pyle. Ellie, how are you? Hello, Tom. I'm good. I'm great. I'm excited to finally be on the show.

I'm actually glad to have you. So, important thing to level set here. Many times on this show, we'll have fake people on. Some of my favorites include News Boy Phil, the 1920s News Boy Curse 2 Eternal Life, Mama Ratata, the magical Italian chef, and of course, maybe my personal favorite, Warren Talbot Concerned Werewolves. You are an actual astrologer. This is not a bit or a joke, correct? You actually study and interpret these things. Yeah, Tom, everybody knows I'm not funny.

Well done. So talk to me a little bit. Before we jump in, there's some people to whom astrology is bogus, other people to whom it's a lifestyle. I kind of refer to myself as astro curious. Do whatever you want with that with your sick mind, Robert George. But I'm open to it. Talk to me a little bit about your approach to astrology, like how you read it, how you interpret it.

Sure, so I have always been kind of curious about astrology but really what it comes down to is that I love patterns and you know you were talking about staring into the dark void of the future and I actually found many years ago that

what helps me when I'm staring into that void of anything is possible, and oh no, what helps is to break it down into math. And my way of doing that is astrology. So I practice a type of astrology that's called mundane astrology that

specifically has to do with the astrology of historical events. It's, you know, I can read somebody's personality in their birth chart. And in fact, Robert, I remember I read your birth chart at one point and was delighted to discover that your moon is in the same sign as your mother's sign, which is always fun.

when that's a thing that happens in somebody's chart. But really, the part that I love to focus on is kind of the astrology of what's happening in the world. And what can we learn about what might happen in the world from what has happened in the world previously? So for me, it's always kind of like running an experiment. It's like,

past events may not be indicative of future results, but it can certainly tell you that a pattern exists even if patterns can always break. So I got particularly serious about studying all of this during 2020 for obvious reasons because those were particularly stressful times.

Um, and a cat's movie had just come out. Everyone was out of control. Yeah. I know. I could not find a showing of cats where I could drink before. We went to it's like a 10 a.m. and then drank after. Um, I think you might have a different problem.

But, you know, so there was also the astrology of 2020 was also really interesting. It was a year that a lot of astrologers had said, this year is going to be really important. Something big and very, very bad is going to happen. We don't know what it is, but we know that it's going to kind of start

In January, and things are going to get very seriously not cuddly by March. And that is, in fact, what happened. So I really kind of use astrology in part as a way of focusing my anxiety of, you know, you don't have to

deal with every possible outcome. Here are some possibilities. Book what might happen. And astrology is better at telling you when things might change than telling you explicitly what is going to happen. I like to think of it kind of like weather.

that, you know, it could tell you that there's probably a pretty good chance it's going to rain today. That doesn't tell you that you have to go to the museum instead of going to the beach, but it might be a better day to go to the museum or pack a number.

Yeah, and weather is such a good point, because I think that's where I kind of connect with it. I've worked in municipal government for the last eight years or so, and anyone can tell you in any major urban city, in the summertime, crime goes up. You can predict that, and you predict that because of basic human behavior. No, you can't see the future, but kids are out of school. Particularly young men are in a position where they might not have as much to do, and trouble can happen.

Temperatures go up air conditioners break arguments between neighbors all kinds of things can occur in that time. Similarly, you know, holiday season now that traces itself back to some harvest festivals. The basic idea was we're going to be cold and hungry. So we better get that food in now. And yet now we still even though we're not in that same kind of society have that yearning at the end of the year to be, you know, amongst people we love and inside and warm.

Part of what inspired this episode, 100% of what inspired this episode. You wrote a great article on the future history of the United States. It's dropped in the show notes of this episode. If folks want to click on that and read it. But talk to us about how the stars are charting the first year for, I can't ever say this without making it, without it feeling weird, the next president of the United States, Donald Trump. Jesus, eight years and it's never going to get easy.

Uh, sure. I'm a guy to be the final guy slash the future guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Over Cleveland, the ones in future president. Uh, so, um, one of the things about astrology is that it is, it is patterns and several of the planets have very predictable, all of the planets have very predictable recurring cycles in their own way. Um, you know, Venus takes eight years to cover, you know,

the exact same set of degrees with its retrogrades, that sort of thing. The sun is the one that everybody knows. It traverses the whole zodiac in exactly a year. So it's the most predictable. It's the most, you know, something happens at the same time every year, probably has something to do with the sun.

So the outer planets, the farther planets are away from the earth, the longer those cycles are. And what's interesting about this upcoming time is that we are right between the end of a major Pluto cycle, which was the Pluto return of the United States, Pluto coming back to

exactly the spot where it was when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Well, not a planet though.

Uh, you know, for the purposes of this discussion, it is. Um, but, uh, that happens every 248 years. So it's the first time that's ever happened. Um, and then, um, and that's something that was focused on kind of 2021, 2022. Um, but then we are coming up on, uh, the Uranus return of the United States, um, which is a something that happens approximately every 84

years. And the previous Uranus returns of the United States have corresponded to what I know my friend Robert George is very excited to talk about something called fourth turnings. And specifically we're looking at the previous Uranus returns of the United States corresponding with the Revolutionary War, the Civil War,

And World War II. So that would suggest that, you know, great wars. I got to tell you. There you go. If you need to make a movie and you want it set during a war, those are your top three. And not even the great war. It doesn't make the cut. Here's about that. Come on. If it was so great, they would have stopped at one.

Fair, fair. So, looking at 2025, we are specifically in kind of this lead up to whatever the next great war is going to be.

And Tom, you and I have talked about the fact that a war can be a lot of different things. And I'm sure we're going to discuss that at great length through this episode. But in terms of where we are right now heading into 2025, when you look at this cycle, the election corresponds

pretty much exactly to the position of Uranus at approximately 25 degrees of Taurus.

that it was on, for the Boston Tea Party, for Pearl Harbor, and for, you know, kind of the 1858, 59 lead up to the Civil War where, you know, people were doing things like getting into fistfights on the floor of Congress. So we're in kind of that lead up time.

where I think the main event of whatever this coming crisis is, is going to put us on the exact Uranus return degree, which is eight degrees and 55 minutes of Gemini. And previous historic events that correspond to that include D-Day, Fort Sumter,

and the actual signing of the Declaration of Independence. So whatever the thing that makes the index of the history books is, we're looking at that in 2027. So we've got some time before we get there. This is absolutely, absolutely incredibly fascinating. We can go down through the, pardon the expression, through the wormhole in any number of ways.

I just want a bit of clarification. When you talk about that specific positioning, I think you said eight degrees, 55 minutes. Was it? Yes, that's correct. If Gemini.

of Gemini. You said that was the same place, after logically speaking, as the Declaration of Independence, Fort Sumter, and D-Day. Correct. The question I would ask is,

The Declaration of Independence and Fort Sumter were very clearly opening shots of the war. D-Day, some would argue, was the closing point. Whereas somebody else might point to Pearl Harbor or going overseas when Britain declared war on Germany,

and so forth. So how, when you just look at it astrologically versus opening shot versus a closing shot of a war. Jumping really quickly, I'll just say it is the opening shot of the 1997 film Saving Private Ryan, or is that 98? I don't really remember. I think it's 98. Anyway, continue out.

Uh, so, uh, I think it is 98. Um, I was, I was dating a guy who was joining the Marines at the time that came out. Anyway, uh, you know, Shakespeare in love was the better movie. Absolutely. All right. Let's take it if you hear people.

Uh, so, um, Robert, that's a really good point. And in fact, uh, so the way I work with all of this is I start by just kind of collecting all of the data and I will say that that's something that surprised me. There were a couple of things in this that surprised me. I would have guessed that, for example, that Harper's Ferry was on that list with the Boston Tea Party

And Pearl Harbor, but it wasn't. It happened astrologically speaking much later, even though it was in that same 1858, 1859 window. But I spent a fair amount of time thinking about, OK, well, what does this tell us, where D-Day is in all of this versus Pearl Harbor? And I think that the shift there

is that those precursor events, as I'm kind of calling them, they're surprising, but they're also emotional. And part of that is because where it is in the United States chart, it's interacting with Natal Pluto and Natal Moon.

that, you know, these are, you know, the Boston Tea Party is, you know, it's this emotional event, you know, fistfight on the floor of Congress, emotional event. And Pearl Harbor was surprising, but it was also a moment that like, it wasn't an active choice on the United States part. If we're looking at this specifically from the U.S. perspective,

It was something that happened to them. And it was this moment of, oh, we need to fight back. And you know, my grandfather was deck captain for the day. So I heard his story about this many times. And he went after lunch. He came back. He was like, what? His story was actually that he looked at his watch when he first heard the planes and he looked at his watch when he when they returned fire and it took less than a minute.

Yeah, that's the only story I remember my grandfather telling me in my childhood. But thinking about it, I think that the actual paradigm shift for the identity of the United States, who are we as a nation that would carry us forward into this next era, that that is what happens at the year in this return. It's the declaration of independence. Who are we? We are this new nation.

It's, you know, Fort Sumter, okay? Who are we? We are this divided nation. And with D-Day, I think it is this moment of it's not being the victims of Pearl Harbor that matters. It's being the heroes of D-Day that's going to define kind of who

how the country sees itself going forward as that change. The move being dragged out of being isolationists by the surprise attack, yes, it was an initial shot, but in terms of the role it played in the overall story, I think it is kind of that, you know, D-Day that would become a bigger part of kind of the collective identity that's defined by that era.

I think I want to just quickly, again, to quickly again make the point. Obviously, no one on this podcast believes we can tell the future or predict what's going to happen. If we could predict the future, oh, we would trade that info for first in business class tickets on Turkish air so quick. Can I get a phone call about that? But I think a thing that... That's a random example, exactly. Random example, yeah.

phone calls, just someone saying, can you predict the future? I need a flight. But I think the, you know, like, I think we talk a lot of the show about obviously politics and history. And you could see plenty of situations, you know, like ultimately politics is, you know, seemingly continuous cycles of a new guard challenging an old guard.

Uh, and then that old, that new guard becoming an old guard and how they, you know, and, and you know, as the saying goes, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And you know, I'm obsessed with presidential elections. You know, JFK, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, all similar kind of like, you know, concepts of running for office where they were kind of challenging a party establishment in different ways. They were different ears, you know,

But, you know, and you can see sort of reflections of their campaigns and, you know, their first couple of years in office through each other, through that same process. And similarly, you know, also looking at, you know, we're looking, you know, at the end of the Joe Biden presidency, I can see a bit of a history rhyming between that and LBJ of, you know, presidents who understood the system, understood the tools delivered a lot, but we're not personally popular for a variety of foreign policy reasons or just, you know, representing a status quo people aren't happy with.

And as you've said, human nature and patterns. But the thing I want to talk about now, so going off that info, and as we mentioned, Robert, before, some of Ellie's article talks a little bit about the fourth turnings and the book there. And talk to me, Robert, about that book, about your obsession and generations as well, and what that informs a little bit in terms of studying history and understanding history.

So I first read the book Generations, which kind of apropos to a phrase you used at the beginning of the podcast. The subtitle of Generations by the authors William Strauss and Neil Howe is the history of America's future, 1584 to 2069. And yeah, nice. Yeah.

Uh, they're nice. God damn it. Nice. Even the nice. Yes. But, um, they're their theory, um, which they articulate to a great length. This book is about, you know, 520 pages or so.

They look at the United States through the prism of generational archetypes and they break it down to basically four different archetypes and

They're the generational cycle of these archetypes runs about 80 to 100 years, which, you know, based on what Ellie was saying, you know, correlates very strongly with this, this 84, this 84 year cycle of of Uranus.

And the generational archetypes they have are to make it as easy as possible. There's the idealist, which currently would correspond to the boomers. There is, if I'm remembering this correctly, the adaptive

which would be, in this case, they call it Generation 13. Everybody else kind of calls it Generation X. A wonderful copy wrote Generation X, so it had to be Gen 13. It had to be, you know, it had to be, it had to be, it had to be, it had to be Gen 13. Then there is the hero, or as we would kind of call it, the best

previous iteration of the of the hero archetype would be the greatest would be the greatest generation. But in the context of our time, it would be it would be the it would be the millennials.

And I'm going to have to give me a second. And I'll remember the fourth. I remember the artists. Artists. It is artists, right, exactly. Which is going to be, you know, you'll call it Gen Z. So the influencers, man, they're artists.

Hey, I just want to quickly say, I was reading an article the other day, at least two or three scientific groups qualify Generation X as people who grew up with lead paint in their houses. So my sister and I were like, we're Gen X again. We did it anyway, can you? That's actually kind of funny. That's actually kind of funny too, because one of the reasons why I particularly like Strauss and Hal's view of history is that

Almost all demographers before them identify the baby boomers as 1945 to 64 or 46 to 64. They, for kind of two arcane reasons to get into, they identify the boom generation as 1943 to 1960.

So, as somebody like myself who was born in 1962, that would put me in what they call Generation 13, which is 1961 to 1980. And I've always felt, for whatever reason, that I don't really identify so much with boomers, except when I'm identified as one on Twitter. But I've always thought of my question. Who is it? It's because you don't have a house with a lawn. That's a big part of it.

It's because you still call it Twitter. It's because I, well, my own phrasing of it right now is I call it X Twitter, which I think is actually, yeah, you think about it? Yeah. So, so, Marvel hasn't copyrighted that yet.

Yeah. So I've always, so this book, I'll talk about jumping over someone. Generations talks, you know, looks, looks in a similar way that way, Ellie sort of takes astrology and looks at it in the context of

of how the planets were lining up during historical periods. Strauss and Howe look at their generational archetypes and the different cycles that they go through and how they correlate with world historical events and particularly those involving the United States. The first book

focuses again on the generational archetype and secondarily on the cycle.

The fourth turning, which came out in 1997, kind of flips that and focuses more on the cycles themselves and this idea of history replicating from an idealist rising period.

ultimately to kind of a degradation, ultimately into a crisis, and then a renewal period. And we are, as Ellie was saying, smack dab, the Uranus return is happening smack dab in the middle of the fourth turning

which is pushing us, forcing us towards a crisis period. And as Strauss and Howe always talk about, these crisis periods inevitably end up in war, and usually kind of total catastrophic type of war, you know, type of war. So, you know, buckle up, kids. Yeah. Let's go ahead. No, go ahead.

Well, let's say a little, and let's talk about that. So like, you know, should I buy a gun? I guess is the question. The answer, of course, is no, but me specifically. Yeah. I would say, I would say generally somebody, somebody of sound minds should think about it, but Tom Brennan. No, no, right after the right after the last show we recorded, Shannon DeVito came up with a great idea for an ADA accessible gun. So we're trying that for Shark Tank.

Going back to what you were saying, Tom, about history rhyming, I think that that's important to keep in mind with astrology as well, that yes, Uranus comes back to this exact same place in the United States chart every 84 years, but everything else in the chart may be different when it does. And so you can't just look at

one planet in the sky to tell you exactly what's going to happen. The Civil War was very different from the revolution. World War II was very different from the Civil War. But all of those events were, as Robert said, kind of total wars that had a major paradigm shift for the identity of the nation. And so that's what we're looking at here. Because there are wars that happened during other periods of time. And that's something the fourth turning talks about.

is that the nature of war is different during different turnings. That during an unraveling, which is what precedes the fourth turning, you get wars that are hard to resolve like Afghanistan. You get stuff that just kind of lingers. But

With, you know, I think that beyond even it being a war, though that is certainly part of it, what we're looking for is a moment that is going to have a definitive watershed before, after the identity of the country changes. And the Pluto return only makes that even more so, because again, that's something that only happens every 248 years. This is our first one.

And because the United States has never had one before, I went and looked at the UK. And their examples include the Battle of Hastings as our starting point, the Ordinances of 1311, which kind of limited monarchy power,

the Tudor religious wars and kind of, you know, Mary Tudor and those succession wars and then the actual founding of the UK and the rebranding, you know, of England into the United Kingdom.

So, you know, again, we're looking at things that kind of have an identity shift for for the country. So in terms of what that may look like for us in this in this next era, I think that's something that, you know, we can all

pretty much see, you know, is probably coming that, you know, what we have been in a stalemate for so long, you know, that something is going to have to shift in terms of how our country is working or not, as the case may be.

we get three very different possible ways that would go, both from the history and from the way things were laid out in the fourth turning, that you have kind of this idea of a revolution, people against power, a civil war, which is people versus people, kind of two sides fighting until one is

destroyed the the fourth turning goes into great detail about how the Civil War didn't quite finish doing a paradigm shift. Everybody just kind of decided they were done and to go home and this would probably be fine. I say as someone who grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the statues are down now. It's

someone to just celebrate the holidays in North Carolina. I also think that the fact that I'm from the Upper West Side still means that I have a nuanced balanced, non biased opinion on a civil war.

And then with World War II, you get the idea of an external threat that requires everyone to kind of unite and go in and be heroes. So I kind of went into this looking at those are three possible iterations of what this is going to be. And for obvious reasons, I kind of went in thinking that what I was going to find is evidence of a second civil war.

And I actually found slightly more evidence for a second revolution and that the astrology at least

support is closer in mirror to the American Revolution than it is to the Civil War. It has some things in common with the Civil War, specifically a Neptune transit that suggests it's going to be a very confusing time, that there's going to be a lot of fog of war, there's going to be a lot of propaganda, there's going to be a lot of people not quite being sure what the best action to take is. But in terms of

what takes us into our new paradigm, our new renewal, as Robert said, that lines up with the revolution. That lines up with, you know, we're heading into an age of enlightenment. We're heading into, you know, out of an age of materialism and economic kind of focus, individualistic focus,

into an age of technological advancement, like the Industrial Revolution and kind of that age of enlightenment humanist perspective. And I think that in the long run, if that is what happens, technology has a huge role to play in all of that. If AI can suddenly do most people's jobs,

we're going to need a whole new economic structure. If people are living much, much longer than they have been because of scientific advancement, we're going to need a whole new economic structure. That technology may open up new possibilities and ways we need to think about things. It's going to introduce some new conflicts as well. And I think we're already starting to see

you know, that confusion, you know, particularly on the internet in this question of what is real? Is that propaganda? Is that a deep fake? Is that a troll farm? Is that a, you know, that I think that's going to continue? But I don't know if the war that's going to come is the kind of war where you're going to need a gun or if it's going to be the kind of war that, you know, we're already seeing

in ideas and propaganda and information. Will you need a gun or will you need the brain intellect and creativity of James Gunn?

I want to add like one quick thing. Just one quick thing like we obviously there were no presence before the revolution anything that is interesting to me Robert you never talked about this the other day. Longest stretch of one-term presidents that we had in this country was before the Civil War but we had three one-term presidents this country before World War II. Even though it will be his second term we are going to be coming up on the third one term you know not it's a non-consecutive term like the third one-term presidency in U.S.

history since after, you know, three back to back, you know, if you want to count Reagan, like honestly, like a pretty long, long stretch of relatively stable election systems to a more, you know, like haphazard up and down presidential election system right now. That's interesting.

Well, and as I said, I love patterns and patterns break. You know, one of the other patterns that I looked into while I was doing all of this research was, is it the 40 year political party cycle, presidential cycle that, you know, suggests that you've got, you know, kind of the two term president who sets the direction for a party, the guy who's kind of the response to that, the guy who's, oh, I'm doing what the guy who set the direction did and then

You know, you have kind of the person who is like a knockoff version of that and the person who sets a new direction that like whatever that cycle is that broke, you know, with this last stretch of single term candidates. So patterns, patterns do change patterns do break or we're in the darkest timeline where the patterns are meaningless. But you know, all these things can be true.

These are the 13 keys of how Ellie is going to figure out this presidential election. Robert, go ahead. No, no, there is. There is, though, an argument, there is an argument, and my friends in the Democratic Party may disagree with this. In fact, I think my friends in the Republican Party might disagree with this as well. You still got friends in the Republican Party? That's interesting. Michael Steele counter. My brother from a different mother. There you go.

I don't want to go down this whole this whole track of talking specific policies and things like that. But in the context of international affairs, one might argue that

The move from Donald Trump to Joe Biden and seemingly going back to Donald Trump might not be that big of a leap or a repudiation. Certainly, we've been caught up over the last 10 years with this incredible

visceral, hostile rhetoric, you know, that supposedly defining the two, you know, the two stark visions that each party, each party has. But one could, you know,

Trump comes in and basically says to the Republican Party what the Democrats have been saying for a couple of decades, going into Iraq was the stupidest thing you could have done. We need to get our butt out of the world and

and bring resources, bring resources home. That was, that's Trump. He basically took him to convince the Republican Party, the Republican Party that Biden comes in, finally gets us out of Afghanistan, obviously not didn't get any, you know, didn't get any thanks, didn't get any thanks for it.

You suddenly have these dominoes falling of, you know, Israel getting, you know, decapitating Hezbollah and Hamas and so forth. And now, you know, we saw what happened with Syria. So, you know, in the context of the America's imprint on the world and sort of a pulling back,

One might argue that the similarities between Trump and Biden are not that vast, so it may be more of a continuity than we might otherwise think.

And a thing about one-term presidents is you only have so much time to change the direction of the ship, you know, that so much of what Biden was doing was dealing with fixing things that, you know, Trump broke. And okay, now Trump's going to come in and he's going to try and do

a different version of some of those things, you know, break more stuff that I think that's when you're dealing with single-term presidents, you have to keep in mind that, you know, the exit from Afghanistan, for example, that like, you know, that was a plan that parts of which had already been committed to and put in place that, you know, that any president is dealing with the consequences of what was put in motion during their predecessor.

I'll talk a little bit so we invoked the concept of war so that our listeners aren't now buying tons of toilet paper and hiding out at home. Obviously, I think this is a good sign. In general, I will never say there's a good thing about Trump presidency. A thing I've appreciated is that it's had a more involved and concerned citizenry than I feel like I remembered in my college years, certainly.

And, you know, like, I think regardless of who's in charge, your shield should be up on some level. We're given these people the power to drone strike, Rosie O'Donnell, no matter who they are. Be they Trump, be they Biden, be they Obama. You know, and I think, you know, also we look at like the sort of points of war, like, you know, the revolution war, the Civil War and World War II.

When you look at those wars because technology advanced it seems like the later war is like the last wars the most brutal of them, but actually that was also around the table we start to have slightly more rules around warfare, and like you know like the American revolution. Great moment for American hit America we won we did it and how do we win.

well in part by going and then murdering them in their sleep because they outnumbered us. The Civil War is one of the most brutal stories you'll ever read and they used to have an exhibit on injured Civil War people at the at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia and it's the grossest stuff I've ever watched. You know, we as a society have evolved so that as we were talking about before we start recording,

War can mean many things. The Cold War ultimately was an economic war, like America won that work as we had more money to buy missiles and a stronger democracy in society that wasn't going to collapse under the weight of buying so many missiles. But fortunately, pretty much no one died. A looming conflict does not necessarily have to be one where we're fearing in the streets and distrusting one another.

100%. And I think that ultimately what Robert was saying about total war, you know, means that there's a winner and a loser, you know, that at the end of this, there, there is a, there were in a different world than the world we were in before this war started. The identity of things has changed. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's the kind of war

that is actively murdering people. It could be primarily ideological. There are other ways that this could happen.

And I will say that you know I talked about 2020 a little bit about how you know all the astrologers were kind of looking at early 2020 saying something bad is going to happen and it is for sure going to be bad. The astrology I'm looking at here.

is neither good nor bad. It is change, but change without the value judgment. Now, there are other planets in the sky that are telling us other things. One of the interesting things, and I'll give credit to Austin Copic and Chris Brennan from the Astrology Podcast for this, is that

The lack of Jupiter's involvement in kind of the situation suggests that we may not see a great man emerge. That is, you know, the standard bearer for this era. We may not see Lincoln, Washington, you know, Roosevelt for this period. But I think that, as you said, technology advances and we need to look at the technology of how wars are fought today.

as we're kind of looking at our idea of what a war is. And certainly there are parts of the world where people are shooting each other and blowing each other up. And we may yet get drawn into that, you know, that maybe a thing that happens or it may be that whatever we've got going on at home is serious enough that we're not as involved as we have been in global conflicts.

Um, and I, I don't want to, I don't want to be Debbie, I don't want to be Debbie Downer, um, here on this conversation about the total war that's looming. Yeah. But, but, but I will say, I have to say this. I mean, I think it's, uh, Ellie, you make a great point saying that, you know, technology is going to, of course, have a big say in, um, and how this period begins to unfold and what the, whatever the res, whatever the resolution of it will be.

But I think it also has to be kept in mind that one of the biggest drivers of technological change, historically speaking, has been war. 100%. Or itself, the innovations, whether it's a cannon, whether it's what was it, the monitor and the marimap, and so forth. And obviously,

And nonviolent, you know, like non weaponry to just vehicle like, you know, like human genome projects came from a lot of M&M's even were were invented so that they wouldn't melt in soldiers hands, right? So that they could have chocolate like it impacts all areas of life. Yeah. No, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I think it's important to clarify which side of the of the war created M&M's if they're Nazis, first of all, that would be a very adorable ad campaign, but I need to cancel M&M's.

I don't think it was. I don't think it was.

Where does mom and spaghetti come into this? It's an important question. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry as we lose ourselves in this moment, as we lose ourselves this moment. But so I did want to be. Very nice, very nice. When you look at the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War II,

Those, all of those were like literal, literal, literal wars. And in a sense, there was, to your point, and to your point, Ali, an ideological,

an ideological component to those that ended up resolving in a total war, whether it's the United States throwing off the yoke of monarchy and going for independence and freedom, or this idea of

Is it OK for men to own other men? Not a good idea. And we ended up there. Well, at least that's what most sane people believe that the Civil War has fought over. But I could be wrong. Who knows? And obviously, World War II is kind of obvious there.

So many of these things start out as what could be considered ideological differences.

To your point again, this time, we could have that kind of a dual crisis where we are, as we've been noticing over the last few elections, having these incredibly tight and harshly ideological elections. At the same time, all kinds of mini fires are popping up around the world. And then the question is, does the United States

get drawn into one of the ones in the Middle East, or are we going to be so consumed by what's going on at home that we're going to be, we don't know how that's going to play out.

I was just to say astrologically speaking, again, I found the fewest commonalities with World War II in terms of what this upcoming era might look like. So us going in and saving the day abroad, I don't think that's the direction that we're heading because also that would not be as big of a paradigm shift from how we've kind of seen ourselves over

this last 80-year cycle, but I will also, you know, say in, I will argue against myself on the literality of a war and say that I think literal war

Has an easier time of getting to that watershed paradigm shift. There's no going back place than anything else does. You know, we've seen that like climate change is a thing that is too abstract for a whole bunch of people to take that seriously as an existential threat. COVID.

was too abstract, no matter how many people it killed. There were a lot of people who just could not get their heads around it in the way that I think war is something that people understand. Us versus them, they're being sides. I think that is part of why war is what's able to accomplish shifts like this.

I was talking about this the other day. The closest point, I think, where we had a nation that was taking COVID very seriously was around the same time that you saw images of like, you know, refrigerator trucks outside of hospitals in New York. That was the kind of imagery that got people to say, okay, this might be real. And even then that didn't last particularly long. I did want to be very clear about the archetype.

the archetypes that I was talking about before, because I had a brain freeze in there. So the archetypes are idealists, which, as I said, corresponds mostly with the boomers nowadays, are followed by

reactive, you know, reactive, which is the, so, yeah, so, or sort of Gen X, Gen 13 for us. The civic, the civic is the next, yeah, the civic is the, is the next one. And in the context of us here, that would be the millennials.

And then that follows the civic historically, the precursor or the most recent predecessor of the civic would be the greatest generation, the hero generation. And then adaptive is the fourth archetype. And as I said, it should be noticed. It's that particular lineup.

of idealist, reactive, civic, and adaptive. That line up in terms of age and ascendancy is what always leads

into this particular crisis. And sure enough, Donald Trump is most likely going to be the last Boomer president, and he is going to be most likely presiding over this crisis period. What a way and generation.

And just to make things extra confusing, I guess between generations in 1991 and 4th turning in 97, they actually renamed them. So in the 4th turning, they called their generations the prophets for the boomers, the nomads for Gen X, the heroes for the millennials and the artists for

Gen Z. So just in case anybody is more familiar with those terms, I will throw those out there. But Robert's absolutely correct that, you know, kind of what that it's it's always the profit idealist generation that kind of brings the crisis about. So to your point of Donald Trump being our last president from that generation.

You know, here, here, here we go. Here we go with our, with our crisis times. Um, Ellie, can you do us a favor? You mentioned that you didn't see any real reflection between America's chart now and America's chart in World War II. When you have a moment, if just check out what Japan, Italy and Germany's chart looked like, right?

See if she's seen he's just in case. You know, that's not a bad idea. I can go. Not comparing any, not making any one-to-one comparisons whatsoever. And, you know, but that is a fair question that, you know, are we the heroes of this coming crisis? And that you have, you know, we were the heroes of World War II by our own branding, if nothing else. You know, there were no heroes.

of the Civil War is something that the fourth turning actually discusses in great detail, which again, I think goes back to the fact that, you know, that people were too quick to forgive and forget and try to go back to a status quo that seemed normal. But like heroism would have been dealing with the aftermath.

Exactly. That's what they say. I feel like Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine. Well, but there wasn't a celebrated generation of, you know, you were the definitive winners of this conflict that, you know, one of the things that Strauss and Howe get into is the fact that

the Civil War was so devastating in terms of lives lost. There was a generation that was wiped out, so the Civil War cycle is truncated, which probably led to that situation that LA was talking about there. You literally lost this whole swath of humanity that could have created a more

equitable or understandable, a longer lasting peace after the war. And I think it's also a cautionary tale about the fact that you can't just win the war, you have to win the peace. And if these are times that there's no going back from

you cannot try to go back. And I keep hitting this because I think this is important and relevant to our modern times where we have shown a certain reluctance to punish bad actors who try things like insurrection. Even before that, I think we've talked about pardons a lot recently. There is a real credible argument for the fact that as much as Gerald Ford probably thought he was doing the right thing that

Maybe it might have been helpful for us to set a precedent that you can criminally prosecute a president. Yeah, it might have been helpful. We don't know.

But yeah, so I think all of that is kind of worth keeping in mind as we move forward. But also, I think it is worth keeping in mind, what is the period after this going to look like? Because yeah, this crisis may take another

five to eight years to play out. We were looking at probably the early 2030s by the time we're done with this particular period. But there is going to be another era on the other side of this. So if this is the last gasp of the old world that there's no going back to when this is over, is there hope in that new world of what that's going to look like? And I think that there are some things that suggest

That's promising. And I think that what cannot be discounted in all of this is the role that, first of all, economics played in all of these conflicts. Freedom and economics are really two big pieces of all of this. The idea of freedom, what does freedom mean? Does freedom mean being our own nation? Does it mean you can't own people? Does it mean

protecting countries abroad from invasion. But what form is freedom going to take in this new world? But also what we're looking at is a revolution

We're recording this at a time when there are a fair number of people from both sides of the aisle on the internet. Pretty happy that a CEO got shot on the streets of New York City. I think that's a piece of this that can't be discounted. As what would unify everybody? Because that is another

Part of this is that it's either two sides that go at each other until only one is left standing, or it is something that manages to actually unify everybody into a cohesive society that can take a new direction. And I think that economics are most likely the thing that would unify folks at this juncture.

i think that's a great point i think it's worth you know uh... listen like uh... prosecute that that kid to the fullest extent of the law we can't go around murdering people in public but the anger behind it if it is you know as is reported uh... is not is not a unique anger to that one young man and the ability to get guns in this country is pretty easy so uh... you know exactly so like maybe might you know what that war looks like is is uh...

TBD, but you know a lot of anger and a lot of guns in this country and that's worrisome. You want me to go look at the Francis chart from the revolutionary years? No, I'm okay. Yeah, see what their stance was on like middle income government hacks who do podcasts. They got out alive.

I've been thinking really since 2020 actually, since the pandemic, and I think it's just kind of accelerated over the last few years. We've gone from this idea of, you know, the United States of America, a sort of a

a unified entity, regardless of all of our little underlying differences and arguments, to the United States of DGAF, where they don't

depending on which tribe we lean towards, our level of sympathy for those deemed as the other has just shrunk to almost nothing. So during the pandemic, you had

those on the right and in the south and so forth saying, oh, you know, you clowns in the blue in the in the blue states. You don't know what you're talking about. You can't go out and, you know, live lives as you are. And, you know, and you're to heck with you. And yeah, you're you're damaged. Exactly what this one guy in North Carolina said.

You're insisting on putting these vaccines into us, blah, blah, blah. But meanwhile, even in the blue states, in the blue states, there was this kind of idea of, well, these idiots down there, let them die off. And hey,

That may even impact us politically because there'll be less red people voting. So you had this kind of a cavalier aspect on both sides about how they see the other and they don't really care about the other.

you've got close to 50% of the country that doesn't really care that the former and future president of the United States launched an insurrection following the last election. So they just kind of shrug their shoulders on it. You've got a number of people, it seems, that are actually okay with the idea of

of killing the CEO of a healthcare company. So I mean, I think this kind of shows to Ellie's point, the pre-crisis emotional uprising that you're starting to see, where people's sensibilities and gut instincts completely overwhelmed

aspects of, you know, more morality or equity seeing, you know, seeing yourself in the other or anything like that. It just becomes much more black and white and, you know, to hell with these other people over here because there's something, they are the other. And I can't just, I don't, I no longer want to deal with them. Ellie, you wrote the article. You get the last word on this.

Well, I was just going to steal one of my favorite Tom Brennan catchphrases, which is that what I hear Robert George saying is that it's time to start caring again. And that I think this new era will actually carry us into that. I think that whatever comes out of this conflict is more humanist, is more collectively minded,

is, you know, looking at the bigger picture, uh, rather than being so focused on the individual, which is kind of the era that we're, we're leaving. So I do, I do have optimism about this. Um, but I, I think that it's good to know, going back to the idea of weather, that there are storms ahead. And, you know, if, if buying a bunch of toilet paper is going to what is what's going to make people feel better about those storms, great.

Do it. Why not? Better before than during. But I think that really, again, this is not going to tell us exactly what's going to happen. It's just going to give us awareness that people should be ready for some difficult times, some interesting times, if nothing else, over the next couple of years.

I think I, you know, given we dropped this during the holiday season, I'm going to call this episode Crisis on Infinite Mirth. With that, we're calling the day for electoral dysfunction. Thank you very much for joining us. Ellie Pyle, where can folks see more of your works, gaze upon your works in despair online or out in the theater world? Hey, that's a great. In December.

That's a great question. So I run a theater company called bespoke plays that is going to be doing a major patreon event at the top of the year. So if that's something people want to look up bespoke plays on patreon, we will be sharing videos from our previous season.

And then my website is actually linked in the comments if Tom put the article up there. So you can find some examples of my writing and theater works there at elipile.com. Robert George, as always, where can folks send all their complaints to you?

On on X Twitter, you can find me at at Rob George on blue sky. Yes, I'm also at Rob George, if my research may correctly. And on on Instagram, I'm at Robert George comedy. And the sub stack is the pun stack for reasons that anybody who's known me for about five minutes can figure out

pretty quickly. But most of my pieces there are lengthy meditations on the passing days, and they're not as punny as I initially had planned on, though there's usually at least one pun in the headline.

It's not punny times. Yeah. It's gonna be the times that test men's puns. That's for sure. Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed this reunion of Tom Brennan's Bojangles bachelor party the night before his wedding.

Yeah. We'll let you hop off. I'm just going to close off on my end. You can find me on Twitter at Brennanator on Instagram at Brennanatorgram on blue sky at Brennanator and Brennanator. And Robert, I think we could probably at this point announce January 16th come to the Grizzly Pear Coffee Club for another electoral dysfunction, comedy leopard mashup extravaganza. The last time we can ever laugh before Donald Trump is sworn in again. More details to be announced soon. Absolutely.

And with that, as always, thank you to Joanne Harris for doing the show, theme music, and thank you to my buddy Ned Dorn, who helps me put these together every single week. Happy holidays, see you next year!