Amateur theorists use two “techniques” to build their grand narratives. The first one is cherry-picking, selecting only historical examples that fit their pet theories. The second one is the Bed of Procrustes, which enables them—stretching a little here, cutting off a bit there—to force various historical examples to conform to fixed cycles postulated by their theories. Ninety-nine percent of “cyclic history” suffers from one or both of these problems. It’s so bad that I tend to avoid the word cycle in my professional articles because it comes with so much negative baggage. (Instead I talk
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