The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond

World War I set the stage for the problem that would force a cyclical shift. Massive industrial growth created a desperate need for customers. World War I destroyed customers.

If birth and death are at the center of the age, and the rituals for both are in tatters, the hunger for companionship is still there and asserting itself constantly.

At the same time, the Democrats became more dogmatic on the economic principles and the ideological and cultural issues.

It is impossible for the ordinary citizen to understand the complexity of the federal government. This is not because of lack of education or intellect, because it is not fully comprehensible even to those in the government. But to those outside, it is impossible to verify the good intentions or competence of the federal system, and incomprehensibi

As with Jackson’s election, the election of Rutherford B. Hayes was chaotic and full of charges and countercharges. The 1876 election is considered one of the dirtiest and most tumultuous in American history.

a state managed by experts dedicated to solutions without an ideology would do for the country what it did for the war: it would breed success. But of course, this became a principle, the principle became a belief, and the belief became an ideology. The ideology created a class who felt entitled to govern and who were believed to be suitable to gov

The gold standard was generating massive investment. By 1900, the United States was producing half the manufactured goods in the world.

This division and rancor are not new. As the social and economic cycles shift, division and rancor are always there. Before Reagan, the country split between the counterculture and Middle America. Before Roosevelt, there was the Red Scare, the populism of Huey Long, and the confrontation between the urban ethnic immigrants, on the one hand, and sma

Political instability will arise a decade or more before the shift, accompanied by growing economic problems and social divisions.

these cycles work in similar ways. The prior cycle reaches a failure point, or perhaps more precisely becomes increasingly inefficient.