Dear {name}:

Over the past year, when I entered into conversations with people genuinely dazed and confused by the direction of the administration, Congress, and the judiciary, I would casually opine that the earth is constantly shifting beneath our feet — metaphorically speaking that is. However, over the past month, those shifts and tremors have become full-on earthquakes that will alter our political landscape and how Americans perceive themselves for the next 100 years.

History does not progress in a straight line. It turns. William Strauss and Neil Howe, in their landmark work The Fourth Turning, argued that Anglo-American history moves in roughly 80-to-100-year cycles composed of four generations, each with its own character, culminating in a Crisis period that destroys the old order and clears the ground for a new one. We have been in that Crisis period for some time now. What we are witnessing today is not a malfunction of the American system. It is the system doing exactly what history demands of it at this stage of the cycle.

The economist Joseph Schumpeter called this process creative destruction — the idea that capitalism, and by extension civilization itself, advances not through orderly reform but through the violent clearing away of what no longer works. The old system doesn't gracefully hand the keys to the new one. It collapses, and something better is built in the rubble.

Look honestly at our institutions and ask whether reform is still a realistic option. I was a counterintelligence officer working in Northeast Asia and Europe in the 1980s and feel comfortable stating the CIA has been institutionally captured by ideological and bureaucratic interests that have little to do with American security. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found 81% of Americans support voter ID. However, Senate Democrats are filibustering the SAVE America Act and blocking a final vote. And after weeks of debate, the Senate adjourned for a planned recess until April 13, with progress on a final vote hindered by stalled negotiations. As I wrote about in a Substack this week, the American Medical Association has functioned for decades as a credentialing cartel that restricts physician supply, protects incumbent interests, and contributes to a healthcare system that costs more and delivers less than nearly any comparable nation. These are not institutions experiencing a rough patch. They are institutions that have become, in Schumpeter's terms, the old firm — obstacles to the very functions they were created to serve.

Into this moment steps President Trump. He is not, at his core, a builder though he has built things. He is a chaos agent, and that is precisely what this historical moment requires. The Fourth Turning does not call for an architect. It calls for a demolition crew. The new institutions that come after, the renewed compact between Americans and their government — that is the work of the next generation. Trump's role is to make that work possible by making the status quo impossible.

This is uncomfortable. Demolition is loud, unpredictable, and occasionally takes out load-bearing walls along with the rot. But consider if you will the alternative — another cycle of half-measures, blue-ribbon commissions, and reform rhetoric while the institutions continue to be hollowed out. That is simply to defer the reckoning to our children, and at greater cost.

The earth has been shifting beneath our feet for years. The earthquakes have finally arrived.

And oh, winter is coming. . .

Onward,

Kevin Lynn

Executive Director, Institute for Sound Public Policy

Founder, U.S. Tech Workers