The Storm Before the Calm: America's discord, the coming crisis of the 2020s, and the triumph beyond

First, the governing class, and the technocrats, accumulate power and wealth, and they begin to shape the institutions to protect their interests.

The 2024 election will be the critical one because it will elect the last president of the Reagan cycle. As with Jimmy Carter or Herbert Hoover, the president will face significant economic and social problems, and what he will do is apply the basic principles of the Reagan era: lowering taxes and reducing regulations. This will be the case with ei

The white working class exists in a world of received, not constructed, morality.

The 2016 election signaled that the political system had sensed the underlying tension, just as happened in the 1968 elections. The political conflict of 1968 would not be closed until 1980. So too the political tensions of 2016 won’t be closed until 2028. First recall that there has always been a politician from the declining class who holds the f

Common sense, the ability to see consequences far removed from the technical issues, has been banished.

For most of the 2020s, the driving economic force will be low growth in productivity, decreased opportunities for investment of accumulated capital, and low interest rates. It will also be a period of increasing unemployment, driven by continued decline in industry and stagnation in high tech as the result of the maturation of the core technology.

and the nation begins to entertain the possibility that the American project has failed.

Therefore, Trump does not represent the transition to the new era. He is instead the first tremor who appeared decisive to his supporters and frightening to his opponents. Trump is the first indicator of a struggle between two classes. But while the ascending class has not yet reached its limit, the descending class is continually bleeding power. T

Political passion rests on believing that it matters. In the 2020s, regardless of whether President Trump is reelected, indifference coupled with cynicism will dominate.