OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION?  Regular visitors to Cold Spring Shops have been receiving Fourth Turning Alerts for years.  Now comes Daily Pundit, who has just finished the fundamental reading.

If there is anything to this cyclic theory of American history, I would contend that the initial spark - the catalyst for all that has, and will, come after - arrived a few years early - a little more than three years in advance of 2005 - on September 11, 2001.

While one might predict some sort of major terrorist attack on the US - if one were a careful student of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, its increasing violence and its growing global reach - 9/11 was a truly unexpected - and probably unpredictable in the specific - event. And from it, all else has flowed, and will flow.

The event that inspires a Crisis mood might not be known until long after the Crisis takes its shape.  Fourth Turning authors Strauss and Howe were maintaining a Fourth Turning chatroom long before weblogs and the quicker-response social media of today.  One of the topics in that chatroom was the possibility that the 2000 presidential election was the catalyst, not the September 11 terrorist attacks.  Note how quickly the consensus supporting President Bush's counterterrorism and democracy projects came apart, something that makes more sense in light of that hung election.  And note the Daily Pundit's contrast of the emergence and stumble of President Obama's administration with the (retrospective) consensus the New Deal still appears to symbolize.

Obama’s naked and brutal assault on the cultural, political, and financial foundations of the nation has weakened us further, and opened wider the yawning chasm that is our future. It was in the milieu he created that a few impassioned words from a stock trader about the need for a “Tea Party” ignited yet another Black Swan: a true peoples’ movement whose future is yet unclear, yet will be, I predict, a nearly unstoppable force that will sweep away the infatuation with socialism that has infected the United States since the last Fourth Turning under FDR.   Even more unpredictably, the deliberate sub-rosa devaluation of the US dollar has, via the channel of the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency, exported inflation all over the world - where we are now seeing effects of that export arising in the Middle East, to accompany the ongoing slow collapse of the Euromart and the death throes of the Euro itself.

The author is not sure where events will come.  The Depression and World War II secular crisis are probably not the best model, for lack of anything resembling a consensus, or anything resembling the strong socialist counterargument the Deep Thinkers of the era could put forward.  The Secession Crisis and Southern Rebellion might reward more careful study, although the transition to that war might have been thirty or forty years in developing.

A Reuters analysis by Peter Apps spells out some of the features of the emerging secular crisis.

With the Middle East in turmoil, other authoritarian states jumpy and post-crisis economic pain prompting protest in western Europe and elsewhere, some suspect a systemic rise in worldwide unrest might just be beginning.

Instability in the already volatile oil-producing Middle East could produce a feedback loop where unrest pushes up energy prices, fuelling inflation and deepening discontent both in the region and around the world.

In most countries, the so-called "misery index" -- an aggregation of unemployment and inflation long seen as a warning of protest and instability -- is pushing higher.

"After an extended period of economic growth and political apathy across the developed and emerging worlds, we may have reached a new political cycle -- one where populations take out their grievances on their leaders and their associates," wrote Citi political analyst Tina Fordham. "This won't be limited to the emerging world."

In democracies, elections provide a release valve -- Ireland has seen some of the worst post-crisis economic pain but minimal unrest in part because voters knew they could oust the government they blame for the crisis in elections this weekend.

But Greece, Britain and others have seen anger expressed in the streets as their governments push through austerity, arguing they have little choice but to rein in unsustainable deficits even if it means cutting services, pay and benefits.

Most analysts agree North Africa's demographic "youth bulge", relatively high unemployment, long-serving leaders and recent Internet penetration made it particularly volatile. But strains are clearly visible elsewhere.

Almost without exception, authoritarian states around the world appear to have seen at least a modest uptick in protest following the ousting of presidents in Egypt and Tunisia.

Even China, whose breakneck growth has long been seen limiting discontent, has blocked terms such as "Egypt" on social networking sites and stepped-up arrests at small demonstrations.

The article continues under the sub-heading "Perfect Storm", a term that the Fourth Turning forum applied to Bush v. Gore.  Oh, for such a simple challenge.

"Two crises are happening at the same time - which is unprecedented I think," said Joel Hirst, International affairs fellow at the US-based Council for Foreign Relations.

"An economic disaster and 'readjustment' of the developed world while the developing world fights for their freedoms. Add in there the oil/energy price, which could be seen as the link between the two, and it makes for a perfect storm.

"An economic disaster and 'readjustment" of the imperial powers while experts fight over the proper form of social organization, anyone? If that sounds like 1917-1933, it should.

Some also see a wider anti-establishment backlash to the global financial crisis, with anger directed not just at politicians of ruling parties but also whole systems of government and wider economic and market structures.

In the United States, analysts say that sense of disillusion is also clear and manifesting itself in different ways. Some turn to the right-wing populist "Tea Party", arguing too much government intervention is the problem.

As individual U.S. states move to cut spending to stave off bankruptcy, some see occasional signs of the kind of backlash seen in Europe -- including recent protests against union reform in Wisconsin as it tries to push through its austerity package.

Consider also the pending popping of the bubble economy that is Communist China, and expect the news to be of distress for a long time.