No Fate but What We Make

Over at The Week, Samuel Goldman writes, “Arbitrary and confusing public health restrictions, political polarization, lurid media, and escalating culture war create a pervasive sense of disorientation verging on madness,” and he contends this is part of a historical cycle:

Several causes of this condition are contingent — not least the pandemic that put many aspects of normal life on hold. But there are deeper sources of our present freakout. In his 1981 study American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, political scientist Samuel Huntington argued that American history is characterized by nervous breakdowns that recur approximately every 60 years. If our last bout was in the 1960s, we’re right on schedule for another outbreak.

That contention reminded me of another theory that American life tends to move through cycles. I recently ran across a YouTube video celebrating the 1997 book, The Fourth Turning, by Neil Howe and the late William Strauss. The Fourth Turning packs a lot of theories in its 400 pages that aren’t easy to quickly and simply summarize, but the gist is that history moves in a recurring cycle of four periods that are about 20 years each — a high, an awakening, an unraveling, and a crisis. The young people of each period have an archetype — prophet, nomad, hero, and artist. A more detailed summary can be found here.

(Way, way back in the ancient era of the late 1990s, I spent six months handling the public relations for the Capitol Steps musical comedy troupe, which was co-founded by Bill Strauss. Just as no man is a hero to his valet, I did not get ‘a visionary prophet with keen historical insight and a gift for uncanny forecasting’ vibe from Strauss. Then again, I was terrible at that job.)

One of the problems with any theory suggesting that history moves in inexorable preset and distinctive cycles is that you have to focus your metaphorical camera lens on particular events and leave the rest of the mess out of frame.

It’s not crazy to believe, as Howe and Strauss contend, that the years from 1946 to Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 represent a “high” in American life. It certainly seemed that way compared to the Great Depression and World War Two! But to classify that era as a a “high,”  you more or less have to hand-wave away segregation, “massive resistance,” the Korean War, McCarthyism, the arms race, Sputnik, Mao and the Communist takeover of China, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the beginning of the Vietnam War.

The period from 1964 to 1984 gets classified as “awakening.” But when contemplating a period that includes the assassinations of Robert Kennedy Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr., Vietnam war protests, Kent State, the Weathermen and domestic terrorism, the pill, the nationwide legalization of divorce, the legalization of abortion, women entering the workforce . . . are we sure that was an “awakening” but not “unraveling?” And can any time period that includes both Lyndon Johnson’s presidency and the Great Society and Ronald Reagan’s first term be easily summarized?

You can argue that 1985 to 2008 represents an “unraveling,” pointing to the end of the Cold War status quo, 9/11, both wars against Iraq, the Los Angeles riots. But that period also includes the tail end of the 1980s economic boom and the 1990s boom, the rise of personal computing and the Internet, and unbelievable technological advances including amazing medical breakthroughs. What would have to happen to make that era qualify as a “high”? This all seems pretty subjective.

Finally, starting in 2008, America entered the “crisis” period – and between the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of ISIS and continuing threat of jihadism, the Ferguson effect in policing and tense race relations, and the deepening political divisions spotlighted by the Capitol Hill riot, that label feels pretty accurate.

But . . . things haven’t been all terrible since 2008, no matter what you think of recent and current presidents, and it’s hard to characterize the past twelve years and change as a period of constant simmering crisis. The national unemployment rate was below 5 percent from October 2016 to April 2020. For three years until the pandemic hit, the labor market tightened and wages went up, including for the lowest earners. Despite all the economic troubles driven by the pandemic, American households’ net worth hit a record in late 2020, as did homebuilder confidence, average credit scores, savings rate and average cash savings, and there are currently 6.5 million open jobs in the country. The 30-year mortgage rate is at a record low. ISIS is gone, al-Baghdadi is dead, Qasem Soleimani is dead, and the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco, and Bahrain now diplomatically recognize Israel. Last year brought news that the U.S. generated the largest decline in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019 in the world, renewable energy use is at an all-time high, and also last year, U.S. energy production exceeded U.S. energy consumption for the first time since 1957. Space exploration is taking off again, no pun intended. The new mRNA vaccines spurred by this pandemic could lead to breakthroughs against cancer and other diseases.

Could there be another epic crisis between now and 2028, defining a two-decade span as a genuine era of crisis? Sure, and there’s a buffet table of doom in the headlines: rising China, hostile Russia, the Iranian nuclear program, artificial intelligence, another pandemic or weaponized viruses, extremism and radicalization of every kind, cyber-threats, natural disasters and climate change, economic instability or another crash . . .

But you would have a hard time finding any era of American life that didn’t include its share of calamities, hardship, division, and looming menaces. Keep in mind, our experiences heavily shape our perceptions; anyone who lived in Oklahoma City in 1995 might think of the 1990s as the “crisis” period.

Perhaps, as the headline to Goldman’s piece argues, “America’s nervous breakdown is right on schedule.” But nothing is set in stone, and we’re not “destined” to go down any particular path.