> I'm not sure which "fourth age" you mean here.
Oh, I was quoting from Tolkien -- the Third Age is the Age of the Rings. Peter Jackson did an amazing job with that series -- turned Tolkien's conservativizing parable into New Zealand postcolonial fiction (the hobbits are really Maoris).
> IMO the USA -- strange as this idea may seem at present -- is the logical
> starting point for the world's next significant popular & dialectical sharp
> left turn
Could be. My New Year's resolution was to stress the optimism of the (euro)will. All the ingredients for a really massive meltdown are here: political delegitimation, savage polarization, an oiligarchy which has gone completely off the deep end, a crumbling currency, an Army on the verge of mutiny, etc. Any day now, California will be applying for EU membership.
-- DRR