I'm convinced that the best way to understand everything going on right now is to look to the beginning of the 20th century, technically starting with the Panic of 1893, up into the Great Depression.

At that time there were tremendous new communication technologies being deployed, telegraph, telephone, as well as tons of other technological advancements, cars, airplanes, etc.

Masses of people were moving into urban areas and working at jobs that didn't exist a few years before. Mass production became a thing.

The Fourth Estate was plagued by yellow journalism and hysteria. America was building an empire. Organized labor became a thing to counteract atrocious working conditions in factories.

Wealth inequality was at all time highs. Speculation was rampant on new financial products. Political corruption was the order of the day with one of America's biggest scandals, the Teapot Dome Scandal, occurring. The Trusts. Buying Senators.

Jim Crow laws. Chinese Exclusion Act. Women fighting and dying to get the right to vote. The Spanish-American War. WWI. Socialism was en vogue, as well as the beginning of Fascism.

That period in US history is nasty and brutish, and tremendously formative for where the country is at today. Unfortunately, things had to get a lot worse before they got better.

I'm not saying the next ten to twenty years are guaranteed to suck, but history does rhyme.....