The Latest for January 20 2025

  Prompt the First: The Authoritarian Fourth Turning I've asserted multiple times that the Fourth Turning isn't when autocracy happens: It's the 2nd.  And here in the United States, we're about to see if that's really the case. But why do I think that in the first place? https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ — From August 1941 "Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type of mind." "It is also, to an immense extent, the disease of a generation—the generation which was either young or unborn at the end of the last war. This is as true of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Americans as of Germans. It is the disease of the so-called 'lost generation.'"   Prompt the Second: A Transaction Cost Economics Assessment of the Civil War How the response to the Los Angeles January 2025 wildfires has me thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles - where I got those L.A. counts The entire population in 1790 was just short of 4 million, 700K slaves - 17.8% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_census The slave population in 1860 (3.95M)  was just about equal to the entire population in 1790 (3.92M) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_census (Although the percentage had dropped, a bit: From 17.8 to 12.7 in 1860)) In any case, the Confederacy was larger than the Colonies - twice as large considering whites alone California had been a state for 11 years in 1860, and it was already 379K - the 26th largest state out of 33, well ahead of New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Delaware. Sacramento was the 68th largest city…with 13K people.   Prompt the Third: Cassandra A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.  Lazurus Long, a character created by Robert A. Heinlein https://www.baen.com/chapters/W200408/The_Notebooks_of_Lazarus_Long.htm