[[George Friedman]] [[The Storm Before the Calm]] # The Beginning of the Cyclic Shift These are my review notes of his article by this name in [[Geopolitical Futures]] - In regards to the predictions made in [[The Storm Before the Calm]], some asked him whether they are happening to early. He thinks this is just the start and its not close to the end of unrest. - The late 60s and early 70s saw the murder of Martin Luther King, civil unrest and riots. It also saw anti-war protests and a backlash against the Democratic Party leading to Nixon's election. - Then the unrest calmed down but in the context of rising rates, rising inflation and middle east trouble between Isreal and Arab countries leading to the Arab oil embargo. Reagen was elected starting the Reagen cycle. - Racial tension has been persistent through us history. "The hayes era grew out of the civil war, which was about the status of blacks", and the era from [[President FDR]] to Carter was about the civil rights movement and abolishing segregation. - When certainty goes away and there is uncertainty and fear, tension grows between the tribes/races. Fear is used to their advantage. - >As I said in my book, the original American sin was not slavery. (Americans were not unique in holding slaves.) Rather it was a betrayal of its own principles where Jefferson had written, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” - >This is the original sin of our republic, and none of us know how to solve it, least of all the enlightened whites who side with them. - The racial tensions are just the start of a transformative period, just as the racial tensions in the late 60s were the start of a transformative period.