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

by Neil Howe

In the current saeculum, the First Turning was the American High of the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy presidencies. As World War II wound down, no one predicted that America would soon become so confident and institutionally muscular, yet also so bland and socially conformist. But that’s what happened. The Second Turning was the Consciousness Revolution, stretching from the campus revolts of the mid-1960s to the tax revolts of the early 1980s. In the months following John Kennedy’s assassination, no one predicted America was about to enter an era of personal liberation and cross a cultural watershed that would separate anything thought or said afterward from anything thought or said before. But that’s what happened. The Third Turning was the Culture Wars, an era that began with Reagan’s upbeat “Morning in America” campaign in 1984, climaxed with the dotcom bubble, and ground to exhaustion with post-9/11 wars in the Mideast. Amid the passionate early debates over “the Reagan Revolution,” no one predicted that the nation was entering an era of celebrity circuses, raucous culture wars, and civic drift. But that’s what happened. The Fourth Turning—for now, let’s call it the Millennial Crisis—began with the global market crash of 2008 and has thus far witnessed a shrinking middle class, the “MAGA” rise of Donald Trump, a global pandemic, and new fears of a great-power war. Early in Barack Obama’s ’08 campaign against John McCain, no one could have predicted that America was a...