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Just as Socio Times entries from earlier this year have shown (see posts of February 8, 2006
and January 6, 2006), anti-Amercian sentiments are “fusing in an unstable mix of discontent.” The WSJ article at left illustrates the strengthening of this phenomenon. It’s expanding depth and breadth was demonstrated at a Beirut conference last month where “a Mexican Marxist denounced America for ‘colonizing’ New Mexico. A South Korean foe of free trade raged against American beef. A Turk fumed about American military bases. A Frenchman denounced American genetically engineered foods and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. There were even a few Americans. One thundered against big business, another against the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”  At another conference now taking place in Iran, 67 leading “holocaust deniers” from 30 countries including David Duke, a former Louisiana Ku Klux Klan, have gathered to discuss “evidence” that the holocaust never happened. Then there is the emerging alliance between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and its impetus, a shared hatred of the United States.

The WSJ article covers a whole host of alliances involving “forces that previously loathed each other.” One British radical who played a big role in his Socialist Workers Party’s hook up with the Muslim Association of Britain says American policies left him with no choice: “I find myself on the same side as Hezbollah, as Chávez. I didn't choose them. America did.” He’s half right. He didn’t chose them, the shifting social mood did it for him.

The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and the New Science of Socionomics (1999)
The character of today’s social events is as bright as any time in history. Look around and witness how a Supercycle upswing in mood has produced events during this decade that are so positive as to have been previously unimaginable. Officials have pronounced the forty-year-long Cold War officially over; the U.S.S.R. has freed Eastern Europe, creating what The Wall Street Journal called “a period of euphoria unequaled in the postwar era”; China appears to be on the long-term road to adopting capitalism and freedom; U.S. political leaders have promised a perpetually balanced Federal budget by constitutional amendment; the U.S. won its first war in 46 years; South Africa ended apartheid three and a half centuries after the Dutch arrival in South Africa and 45 years after its adoption as official government policy; and countless political and religious leaders have reached conciliation after decades, centuries and in some cases millennia of animosity.

The response of today’s conventional analysts to these conditions is as optimistic as it was in the late 1920s. For example, State Department Policy Planner Francis Fukuyama, in his widely praised New York Times bestselling book, declares “the end of history as such” because political risks have been obliterated by the global triumph of Western liberal democracy. World officials agree, expressing joy that a new golden age of world peace and prosperity has begun. The public agrees; as a result of all this truly wonderful news, the Consumer Confidence statistic in 1998 approached its highest levels of the past 25 years. The vast majority of citizens, public and private, including all conventional futurists, economists and political analysts, are bullish on the stock market, the economy and the future as far as the imagination can project. However, you, as a reader of this book, have the basis for a more reliable perspective. Understanding that “bullish” means that things will improve and “bearish” means that things will deteriorate, are the events described above bullish or bearish? Events of recent years, as chronicled above, are the opposite of the social spectacle of the 1930s and 1940s.

Are the latest events, deeply welcome as they are otherwise, consistent with events that accompany a social-mood bottom or top? Given your answer, should we anticipate an acceleration or long continuance of the trend we have enjoyed or begin anticipating a reversal? If your answer is the same as mine, then you disagree with (to the nearest percent) 100% of economists, who conclude that these events have created “favorable fundamentals” that are bullish for the indefinite future. Events look so good at a major top and so bad at a major bottom that few can envision any trend but a continuation, if not acceleration, of the one that brought them there. The point of this section is to communicate that that very fact implies an increased probability of change.
Keep in mind that event extremes are relative. Just because times are good does not mean that it must be a top. Similarly, just because times are bad does not mean that it must be a bottom. Both the Renaissance and the Dark Ages lasted a long time. The key, as always, is a proper perspective provided by the wave structure.

At The Crest of the Tidal Wave
Countless books today reflect optimism toward the long term trends for markets, the global economy, technology and everything else. “Futurists” of all stripes project today’s trends decades ahead, unconcerned with possible interruption and convinced that any setbacks will be so minor as to be unnoticeable. Linear extrapolation is not confined to the professions of economics and market analysis, either, but permeates the social sciences.

For example, a scholarly book published in 1992 entitled The End of History and the Last Man has been called “must reading” among intellectuals. It presents an argument in favor of, as one reviewer described it, “profound optimism” toward the future. I have no quarrel with any particular author, as all such books present classic cases of identifying a trend when it is nearly over and then projecting it into the future. However, the theme of this book is particularly instructive because it deals with long term history, which is so exquisitely the province of the Wave Principle. The author argues that the inexorable trend of history is toward worldwide liberal democracy. As evidence, he presents the increasing number of such democracies worldwide since 1790, when only three existed: the U.S., France and Switzerland (prior to 1780, Switzerland was the only one). The author does the same thing that most sociologists and financial analysts do: he extrapolates prior trends linearly into the future. Five years ago, had another historian listed the increasing number of people subjugated by Communist regimes since 1917, he might have projected worldwide takeover by Communists, when in fact the trend reversed in a crash. The numbers this author presents showing the rise of liberal democracy simply reflect the trend of the stock market, i.e., of positive social mood, from its Grand Supercycle degree low in 1784 to its current all-time high. In fact, the two “corrections” of the trend toward liberal democracy in the author’s graph roughly coincide with bear phases in stocks, exactly reflecting the case that a negative trend in social mood has tangible results.

The extent of worldwide liberality in politics has waxed and waned for millennia, so it is doubtful that an endless political New Age is dawning; more likely, one is cresting. While the Wave Principle does reveal that mankind’s progress is ultimately ever upward, each advance is nevertheless interrupted by setbacks. As the worldwide decline in fortunes takes hold during the Grand Supercycle bear market, the number of liberal democracies will shrink. (Indeed, from a larger perspective, the next major wave of cultural advance might coincide with an even more liberal form of government, one that does not allow the majority to impose its whims upon everyone else.)