Discussion Main / CyclicNationalFascination

Hmm, this seems to just be a fancy name for "fad", and the examples given are a pretty mixed bag. I'd certainly classify the passing interest in truckers/CB, disco, and King Tut as fads. The anime example is debatable: it's been around for at least 50 years, I think at that point it becomes more of a genre than a fad. Cycles in political activism seems a very different idea: yes, every now and then conservatives get more active and every now and then liberals get more active. (BTW I think there are a lot more examples of liberal political activism "phases" comparable to the conservative examples than the two cited: how about the Clinton craze, the hippy movement, the Vietnam anti-war movement, etc?) The back and forth of liberals and conservatives has been going on for hundreds if not thousands of years. That's a "cycle" in the more literal sense of the word: it goes around and around endlessly. That's quite different from the CB craze. I'm not aware of any previous CB crazes, nor do I really expect to see another. It was pretty much a one-time thing.