Sublime

cut both ways.

politics but Federal

fixation on the executive

These three forces—technology, economics, identity—together almost always generate backlash that produces a new politics. Human beings can absorb only so much change so fast. The old politics, inherited from a prior era, often cannot keep pace. Politicians scramble to adjust, modifying their views and finding new coalitions. The result is reform an

We cannot predict with certainty what shape our revolutionary age will take—whether progress or backlash will dominate the years ahead. The future is not some settled fact out there for us to divine. It will depend on human actions and interactions over the years and decades to come.

the big picture.

Time, March 26, 2006