I am interrupting my regularly scheduled programming to zoom in on the People’s House demolition and then zoom out to a bigger picture perspective, looking for reasons to feel optimistic. (Also, adding some Fall-vibe pics from across the world for you at the end.)
This is a longer piece that took a few days to research and compile.
On Monday, Oct 20, 2025, heavy equipment smashed into the façade of the East Wing of the White House. It hurt watching it. I felt violated even though I had never been there. The White House is my house, your house, our house. Now, we have a person who we’ve allowed to live there for four years, destroying our property and its history to build himself a golden ballroom none of us want or care about while slashing funding for healthcare and vital social programs millions depend on.
Simultaneously, I watch overt gerrymandering with the stated purpose of creating one dominant party that, for all intents and purposes, could not be dislodged from power regardless of technically “democratic” elections. I watch senators and congressmen bow down, kiss the rig, and go about the business of not representing their constituents to please the megalomanic ego of a rambling, greedy, and running from the law president, too old to live alone, too small for his suits, too unhealthy to think straight, and yet in charge of the nuclear codes.
I watch him install his loyalists in positions of power, golfing happily while people like Russel Vought and Stephen Miller actually run the government, chipping away at checks and balances, spreading cruelty, and faithfully executing their shameless Project 2025 agenda. (Check out The Visionary of Trump 2.0 by The Atlantic and What You Should Know About Russell Vought, Trump’s Shadow President by ProPublica, and The Rise of Stephen Miller, The Architect of Trump’s Hardline Immigration Policy by The Guardian.)
And if this is not enough, I watch Trump try his darnest to occupy American cities, conveniently before the mid-term elections, throw the DOJ after political opponents, and shake up media outlets for bad coverage while he lies constantly about everything, including not touching the East Wing and paying the $200 million it will take to build the ballroom out of his own pockets. That was two months ago.
Now, the East Wing will be fully demolished. The ballroom will be $300 million paid by taxpayers and private donors, not Trump.
The temptation is to despair. But if you step back and look through history’s longer lens, what’s happening isn’t just our political chaos. You will see a recurring pattern of civilizational reboot. Every 70 to 90 years, the system we inherited collapses under its own contradictions. And every time, technology is both the accelerant and the instrument of renewal.
The Founding Era of 1787 - 1812: Revolution Meets the Printing Press
In the late 18th century, people revolted against the British monarchy. They also revolted against information monopolies. The printing press, cheaper paper, and mass literacy allowed ordinary citizens to debate philosophy, distribute pamphlets, and imagine self-rule. Ideas that once belonged to scholars and clergy now circulated in taverns and town halls.
But the old system of monarchy, mercantilism, and hereditary privilege didn’t go quietly. Britain sought to maintain control, elites feared chaos, and most colonists were unsure whether democracy could even work. It took 25 years, from the Stamp Act protests in the 1760s to the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, to transition from an empire to a republic.
During that time, we ended up with the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Bill of Rights, the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Bank Act of 1791, and the Virginia and Kentucky Resolution, essentially creating the United States of America as we know it.
At the same time, Europe was undergoing its Enlightenment period, from which we emerged with mechanical and carbon engines, the Industrial Revolution, the system of Financial Capitalism, Representative Democracy, and Nation States.
Essentially, over the course of those 25 years, people dismantled the old civilization and constructed an entirely new world order, new systems of governance, and new opportunities for growth, made possible by the new technologies of the time.
Those who benefited from the old system — the landed gentry, the Crown’s merchants, the bureaucrats — fought change at every step. But they couldn’t suppress a new class of thinkers, engineers, printers, and fed-up masses who saw freedom as inevitable. People wanted independence. Communication and technological progress empowered them to organize and stand up.
The Gilded Age of 1865 - 1890: Inequality, Industry, and the First Great Backlash
Less than a century later, the country faced another inflection point. The Industrial Revolution had made a handful of men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt, unimaginably rich, while workers toiled in squalor. Simultaneously, railroads, telegraphs, electricity, and mechanization were transforming life for all of society.
In 1862, Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act, which funded the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad connecting the East and West through land grants and government bonds. And build they did. Railroads created a truly continental economy. They linked raw materials, factories, and markets. They also standardized time zones, accelerated immigration, and made corporate organization (and corruption) the dominant political force of the era.
Again, for about 25 years (from the 1870s to the early 1900s), labor movements and progressive politicians pushed back against monopolies, corruption, and child labor. The tipping point came through tragedy and pressure, economic crashes, strikes, and public outrage. Out of that chaos came corporate and antitrust regulation, monopoly busting, the eight-hour workday, and our early welfare systems. The corruption of the political establishment at the time spurred a wave of clean-government movements, such as the creation of the 17th Amendment, progressive reforms allowing citizens to propose laws and vote directly on them, or to remove corrupt officials, and stripping state legislatures of the power to appoint senators, giving it to voters.
The 25 years of the post-Gilded Age era became known as the Progressive Era, marked by moral and social reform movements that tackled poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, and women’s inequality. We came out of it with the 19th Amendment institutionalizing women’s right to vote. Settlement Houses (Hull House, 1889), pioneered by Jane Addams, provided education, childcare, and healthcare to immigrants. We also created laws establishing federal oversight of food and medicine safety.
Unchecked industrialization had ravaged land and wildlife. Progressive leaders reframed nature as a national treasure, rather than a resource to be exploited. Think of the Forest Reserve Act (1891), which created national forests, institutionalizing federal protection for parks with the establishment of the National Park Service, and Theodore Roosevelt’s Conservation Policies (1901–1909), protecting over 230 million acres of public land.
This period birthed nearly every modern convenience we still depend on. Technology no longer served only the elite. It democratized access, mobility, and opportunity, literally powering a new middle class.
Edison’s first power plant was built in 1882, and by the 1920s, electricity had become widespread throughout the country. Henry Ford built the first automobile, and assembly lines churned out cars in mass production. We developed mandatory urban sanitation systems and clean water infrastructure, and in 1903, the Wright brothers flew the first airplane.
The people profiting from the old model —industrialists and politicians —once again bitterly resisted reform. But new technologies created both the problem and its solution: railroads and telegraphs made corporate monopolies possible, but they also linked people across the country, uniting labor and reformers. The Gilded Age was brutal, but it laid the foundation for the modern middle class.
The Postwar Era of 1945-1970: The Machine Becomes the Middle Class
By the mid-20th century, America underwent another tectonic shift, one that fused technological might with social engineering. The Postwar Era was the third great reset in US history. After the Great Depression and two world wars, people were desperate for stability and prosperity. The new emerging system combined industrial mass production, strong government intervention, and a social contract that promised upward mobility.
The technological tipping points were enormous. Mass production perfected by wartime industries spilled into civilian life, starting a manufacturing boom for cars, appliances, and suburban housing. Electrification reached rural America through the TVA and New Deal programs. Television united the country’s imagination and set the cultural agenda. Computers were born from wartime codebreaking, eventually seeding Silicon Valley. Interstate highways (1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act) literally rewired the nation’s infrastructure, changing where and how Americans lived.
The social tipping points were equally profound. The GI Bill (1944) expanded higher education and homeownership, creating a powerful middle class. Unionization and collective bargaining secured living wages and benefits for industrial workers. The Civil Rights Movement challenged segregation and the moral hypocrisy of American democracy. The Women’s Movement and the Pill (1960) began to dismantle patriarchal constraints on female autonomy.
Corporate magnates, segregationists, and Cold War warriors all tried to preserve the hierarchies that had served them. They feared what automation, equality, and globalization would bring. Yet, within twenty-five years, the transformation was irreversible.
Technology made it impossible to go back. Once households had television, you couldn’t hide the images of war, injustice, or protest. Once workers could produce more with machines, the logic of sharing prosperity became inescapable. Once science unlocked nuclear energy and spaceflight, the public imagination expanded beyond borders and dogma. The result was the most egalitarian, innovative, and economically secure period in American history, albeit a short-lived one.
The Fourth Turning of 2025 - ?: When the System Outgrows Itself
Every eighty years or so, America seems to reach a breaking point — a moment when its institutions ossify, its ideals are betrayed by reality, and its technologies evolve faster than its ethics. It’s as if the country outgrows its own skin and has to shed it.
Each time, new tools forced new rules while the people who thrived under the old system fought to keep it alive by attempting to entrench themselves. And each time, they failed because when technology changes how people work, think, and connect, no amount of money or political will can hold back the tide.
So far…