Looking back at 2017: A shape-shifting year that promises big change ahead

Intro:

As explained by evolutionary anthropologist Peter Turchin in “Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History” (Salon review here), America is in the midst of a period of escalating political instability, even potentially state breakdown. The demographic pressures driving this period will not peak until after 2020, and similar periods in the past have included the English and French revolutions as well as our own Civil War. There were not many ordinary years for people living through those times, either.