Gotta hold onto something. Some of it is just a desire to believe in a better future, but some of it is rooted in a fascination with history. Everyone always thinks they're living in the last days - if not in religious terms, in political ones. Every polity is on the cusp of dissolution in every era - but actual dissolution is comparatively rare.

We survived the early crises of 1790s, the oligarchic 1800s and 1810s, the struggle for democracy* (BIG asterisk) and against regionalism in the 1820s and 1830s, the anti-immigrant fevers of the 1840s and 1850s, the literal civil war and a Southern sympathizer in the role as president during the 1860s, the corruption and heightened partisan activity of the 1870s, the robber barons of the 1880s and 1890s, the labor upheavals of the 1900s, the free market fetishism of the 1920s, the depression and rise of fascism in the 1930s, WW2 in the 40s, the Civil Rights movement in the 50s and 60s, the Christofascist threat starting in the 80s, the militia movements of the 90s, the creeping security state of the 2000s and 2010s...

All great upheavals with the potential to tear the country apart, for better or worse (most of them with considerable overlap). All of them we've survived. And many countries alive today have similar stories.

It's up to us, the Americans of our age, to ensure that the 2020s are remembered as a time of struggle against entrenched elites and the pushback inherent to that.