Discontent deepened and sharpened partisan conflicts. Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.

– Former President George W. Bush – October 19, 2017

People young and old will puzzle over what it felt like for their parents and grandparents, in a distantly remembered era, to have lived in a society that felt like one national community. They will yearn to recreate this, to put America back together again. But no one will know how.

– Strauss and Howe:  "The Fourth Turning", FIRST EDITION, page 252

Once in a land of plenty, free people united together to create one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. They worked hard. They innovated, created, and prospered. 

Before long, however, a group of greedy men secretly met on a remote island and developed a scheme to capture the entirety of the nation's wealth.