The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End

Marcel Proust wrote that “what we call our future is the shadow that our past projects in front of us.”

The most important question is whether Americans are prepared for the trauma that will accompany the collapse of one regime and the emergence of another.

Income is becoming more correlated with education (though less with race or ethnicity).

“We find that across the globe, younger generations have become steadily more dissatisfied with democracy—not only in absolute terms, but also relative to older cohorts at comparable stages of life.” Affluent nations, especially anglophone affluent nations, appear to be at the forefront of this generational trend.

guns now kill more children annually than automobiles (an astonishing predicament America shares only with Yemen).

Blaise Pascal: History has reasons that reason knows nothing of.

Yet if economic stagnation and unfair wealth distribution are growing long-term worries, Americans’ more immediate concern is how falling civic trust threatens national cohesion if not the very possibility of democracy. That’s the second driver.

Behind this palpable negativity lie three major drivers: first, worries that rising economic prosperity in America (what historian James Truslow Adams once called the American Dream) has come to an end; second, worries that civil discord may either split America into pieces or crush its democratic institutions; and third, worries that America is su

At this moment in the Millennial Crisis era—possibly just beyond the halfway point—it makes sense to pause and try to assess America’s overall social mood.