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And as promised, here is the script from my video:
​
There’s a rumor going around that I am Mr. Beat.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Roman Empire. I mean….the 1890s

You see, it often feels like I’m not living in the 2020s. It feels like I’m watching the 2020s from the 1890s.

Some argue that the 2020s feel like the 1960s, a decade of protests, political violence, dramatic cultural change, and generational conflict. Others argue that the 2020s feel like the 1850s, another time of polarization that saw political violence, the collapse of institutions, and two sides that absolutely refused to compromise and even viewed the other side as existential threats.

In this video, I’m going to argue that the 2020s are actually-
Philip (interrupting): Ya know, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. 
Mr. Beat: I know that Philip.
Philip: (continuing): Take the 1890s, for example. A time of extreme economic inequality. 
Mr. Beat: Well…I was gonna say that…
Philip: It was a time in which industrialists amassed vast fortunes, yet workers struggled with low wages and instability.
Mr. Beat: Well this is a Mr. Beat video, ok? 
Philip: Wealth concentration reached historic heights.
Mr. Beat: Oh no! My legs are cut off!
Philip: (finally looking over, concerned) Oh my gosh, are you ok?
Mr. Beat: Yeah. It’s just a green screen effect, but I had to get your attention somehow. You were really in the zone.
Philip: I’m sorry about that. (looking around) Wait, how did I get in a Mr. Beat video?
Mr. Beat: Well, regardless of how you got here, how about you stick around and jump in when I need you?
Philip: Right. (turning to camera) Industrial titans like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie-
Mr. Beat: Philip, I’ll let you know when to jump in
Philip: Oh sorry.
Mr. Beat: And then maybe later I can jump in a Spectacles video?
Philip: (coldly) I’ll think about it.

Mr. Beat: Dang bro. (turning) Well, in THIS video, I’m going to argue that the 2020s are MOST like the 1890s…at least here in the United States. And here are 12 reasons why. 

1. Reactionary Politics to Changing Demographics
In the early 1890s, Americans were going through its worst economic crisis yet- The Great Depression. No, not THAT Great Depression, the OG Great Depression, which we had to change the name of for history textbooks, so it’s now called The Long Depression since it was the longest depression in American history. Again, economists are not that creative when naming recessions and depressions. Anyway, Americans, as humans tend to do, looked for scapegoats…people to BLAME for their misery. And the low-hanging fruit, sadly, was already marginalized communities. The usual suspects, immigrants, African Americans, Native Americans. For the first time, the federal government passed laws restricting immigration. Racist laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act. Jim Crow laws, or state and local laws that enforced racial segregation mostly in Southern states, were very common by the 1890s. In 1896, the Supreme Court even upheld this racial segregation. By the 1890s, Americans had stolen nearly all Native American land. But they didn’t stop there. On December 29, 1890, in what became known as the Wounded Knee Massacre, U.S. Army troops murdered hundreds of Lakota civilians at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. The federal government even had the audacity to award some of those soldiers who murdered civilians Medals of Honor.

Well here in the 2020s, and after decades of people trying to get those Medals of Honor revoked, now we have the literal Secretary of Defense saying… 
This is a reflection of a much bigger reactionary trend currently happening not just in the United States, but around the entire world. As the economy has gotten worse in the 2020s, people have looked for scapegoats. Recent demographic shifts and social liberalism, combined with media hysteria, has made it easier to find such scapegoats. Immigrants, of course, are still the main scapegoat. There have been brutal immigrant takedowns, sometimes even of LEGAL citizens. We’ve seen a backlash against the LGBT+ community…particularly the transgender community. We’ve seen a backlash against voting access expansion. Overall though, people are increasingly rebelling against “the establishment,” or those who they view as the elites in power.

2. Technology Anxiety
The 1890s were peak Second Industrial Revolution time, baby. Unlike the First Industrial Revolution of around 100 years prior, which revolved around a lot on textile manufacturing and steam power, the SECOND Industrial Revolution revolved around electricity, steel production, and big time advancements in communication technologies. All of a sudden, EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY in the world were connected, and this dramatic technological change had a big impact on people psychologically, morally, and obviously economically. I mean, for the first time, you had telegraphs, telephones, lightbulbs, motion pictures, mass-circulation newspapers. People freaked out about this stuff when it first came out. Want an example of this? In 1891, after electricity was first installed in the White House, President Benjamin Harrison famously was terrified to touch light switches because he thought he’d get electrocuted. But overall, folks worried that all this new technology was corrupting the kids, destroying jobs, and they even were afraid it was overstimulating the public.
Sound familiar?
In the 2020s, similar concerns surround artificial intelligence, or AI, social media, and automation, all part of what some folks call the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Third Industrial Revolution revolved around the shift from mechanical and analog to digital and micro, by the way.
Anyway, in the 2020s many people are freaking out that this new Fourth Industrial Revolution is hurting kids' ability to socialize and be happy, shortening our attention spans, killing jobs, and leading to too much misinformation.
Hey speaking of which…

3. Rampant Misinformation
DUE to all this new communication technology, the 1890s saw the first time misinformation quickly spread around the world. Thanks to the influence of dudes like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, “yellow journalism,” or journalism that sensationalizes the truth to get the reader's attention, became huge. These newspapers fueled moral panics, exaggerated stories, and straight up just made stuff up. Most famously? They almost single-handedly created public support for the Spanish-American War. Oh yeah, imperialism is coming up later on in this video.
In the 2020s, social media and algorithm-driven platforms play a comparable role, quickly amplifying misleading or false claims because they generate clicks, shares, and engagement. 
In both the 1890s and 2020s, a new, fast-spreading form of media that rewarded speed of delivery and outrage over accuracy put people in two completely different realities.

Hey, you wanna know one way to fight back against misinformation? By critical thinking. And I’ve got a book that inspires us to do just that. THE BOOK, man. Quite literally. “The Book.” The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding Civilization. Let’s check it out.

(footage of Mr. Beat reacting to the book as he turns through the pages.

So, as you can see, it’s visually stunning. High paper quality and binding, meant to last a millenia, not a decade. Each book contains a secret puzzle for readers to discover, adding an extra layer of intrigue and interactivity. It’s captivating for both your technical and humanities-minded friends. Friends? Yeah friends. This would make the perfect gift for your smart friend…or yourself…since…ya know…you’re pretty smart, too. 

Seriously, one of the coolest books I’ve ever seen. Check the link in the description to buy a copy, and use code MRBEAT10 to get 10% off your order. Thanks to Hungry Minds, the creative team of artists, scientists, architects, designers, and entrepreneurs behind this book, for sponsoring this video. 

4. Corporate Consolidation
First of all, when I say “corporate consolidation,” I’m talking about huge companies merging to form even bigger huge companies, to a point where, no matter what industry or market, there’s just a handful of companies competing. And yep, the two most striking examples of corporate consolidation we see in American history happened in the 1890s and…uh…TODAY…in the 2020s.
By the 1890s, the United States had gone through very rapid industrialization. Railroads linked the national economy together, making it so companies were able to make more money BY FAR than ever before. Companies got even bigger when turning to both horizontal and vertical integration in order to DOMINATE markets. By the way, horizontal integration simply just means one company buys up its competition, while vertical integration simply just means one company owns the entire supply chain. This environment led to trusts, or legal arrangements that let multiple companies operate under centralized control. Standard Oil alone controlled nearly 90% of the American oil refining capacity by the early 1890s, for crying out loud. The 1890s saw the peak of monopolies, or when one seller dominates a market, and the main problem with monopolies is that they can take advantage of their power by charging ridiculously high prices. 
Sound familiar? In the 2020s, advances in digital technology, data aggregation, and logistics have made it so that companies are making more money BY FAR than ever before. Network effects, in which platforms become more valuable as more users join, created natural monopolies in parts of the economy like retail or entertainment. Meanwhile, DECADES of deregulation, lackluster antitrust enforcement, globalization, and the growing importance of finance in growing the economy, have encouraged mergers and acquisitions across industries ranging from airlines to telecommunications to healthcare to agriculture. The result has been high concentration in many markets, leading to higher prices and lower quality of all kinds of goods and services. For example, some research has suggested that hospital mergers have caused price increases as high as 65% in recent years DESPITE a decline in quality of service.^12
Philip: But Mr. Beat, there’s more!
Mr. Beat: Ok, now you can talk!
Philip: These big companies didn’t just exercise outsized sway over prices and consumer choice, they also paid almost no taxes and had free rein in their industrial practices (which destroyed the environment) and in their labor practices (which abused workers with insecure short-term gigs in dangerous factories).
Mr. Beat: Well that sounds familiar too!
Philip: And they were able to do all this because these companies were bigger than the government!
Mr. Beat: No way.
Philip: Yes way! Up to this point in American history, it was the states who were responsible for regulating business, and these new national companies were almost impossible to regulate…until politics went national with Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt. And in 2020 we’ve got a similar problem. Corporations are now multinational, and they’re just as hard to regulate as national corporations were in the 1890s.
Mr. Beat: That sounds like a real tricky situation.
Philip: It is! And we’ve got a whole video on it, which you should go watch, but only after you finish this one.
Mr. Beat: Saved yourself there. That’s good.


5. Extreme Wealth Inequality
And DUE to this corporate consolidation, a FEW folks have become filthy. Filthy rich, I mean.

In the 1890s, wealth inequality was out of control. The richest 1% of Americans controlled as much as 51% of the wealth.^3 The poorest 50% of Americans probably controlled less than 1% of the wealth.

Sound familiar? In the 2020s, wealth inequality is once again near historic highs. Today, the richest 1% of Americans control at least 31% of the wealth.^4 The poorest 50% of Americans control less than 3% of the wealth. Sure, that’s not as bad as the 1890s, but at no other time in American history has wealth inequality been as bad as it is right now OTHER than the 1890s, and that’s pretty wild.

Philip: It is. And we talk all about that, too, in our video.

Mr. Beat: I almost forgot you were standing there. (nervous laugh)

Philip: I’m watching

6. Extreme Corruption in Government
And a big reason why this corporate concentration and extreme wealth inequality have both happened is because a corrupt government has ALLOWED it to happen. Heck, in some instances, politicians have BENEFITED from it happening.

In the 1890s, political machines, or highly organized political organizations that often controlled cities or even entire regions, controlled votes and held onto power through a combination of loyalty and favors. You vote this way, you get money. But if you vote THIS way, you LOSE money. You vote THIS way, you gain a bunch of new friends. But if you vote THIS way, you gain a bunch of new enemies. In the 1890s, the spoils system, aka patronage, which basically said you should reward the people who got you elected, was still around, although on the decline. Overall, though, in the 1890s it was still incredibly easy to bribe politicians. If a corporation wanted to get a law passed…or perhaps more importantly…if they wanted to PREVENT a law from getting passed, they could just buy a politician by funding their campaign and then threatening to take away campaign funding if that politician didn’t fall in line.

(sigh) Sound familiar? In the 2020s, corruption is back to 1890s levels, baby. Sure bribery has always been a problem in Washington, D.C., but now it seems to be worse for various reasons. In the landmark case Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court ruled that laws restricting political spending by corporations and political organizations went against the First Amendment. Well, this decision has made it easier for corporations, super PACs, and just overall rich folks to spend lots of money to influence politicians, and due to this, they now have a huge influence over policy. Not only that, today we have the rampant practice of lobbyists and special interest employers hiring former politicians and government officials, thus causing politicians and government officials to be too nice to industries they hope to work for in the future. There’s regulatory capture, in which regulatory agencies serve the interests of the industries they are supposed to regulate instead of…ya know…US. And thanks to President Donald Trump, the spoils system is back with a bang. He has clearly favored loyalists in his administration over actual experts, especially in his second term so far. There’s also a lot of evidence that President Trump is making a lot of money off his presidency.^5 This ain’t no secret. It’s all out in the open, as symbolized by the oligarchs proudly sitting behind Trump at his second inauguration.

And of course there’s gonna be a backlash to all this. 

7. Rising Populism
First of all, many talk about populism these days but few actually define it. So let’s define it. Populism is a movement seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people and against the interests of the privileged elites. 
In the 1890s, populism skyrocketed into the mainstream, with farmers frustrated with railroad and bank monopolies uniting with city workers frustrated with industrial monopolies. They even formed the Populist Party, one of the most successful third parties in American political history, which had goals like government control over certain industries, getting rid of the gold standard, the expansion of democracy, and making the wealthy pay more in taxes. The Populists of the 1890s called for social reforms and the end of political corruption. “The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer,” said the most famous Populist of this time, William Jennings Bryan^6. Across the country, ordinary people rose up to fight back against the elites.

Is that at least STARTING to sound familiar? In the 2020s, we have a new coalition of Americans completely fed up with concentrated power. They want more taxes on the wealthy, they are fed up with corporate welfare, or financial aid provided by a government to corporations. The aforementioned President Donald Trump came to power through populist rhetoric, using phrases like “Drain the Swamp.” On the other end of the political spectrum, Bernie Sanders has sounded a lot like William Jennings Bryan, criticizing corporate influence over politics and the concentration of power among the top 1% while advocating for policies like wealth taxes on billionaires and Medicare for All. People who lean both to the left and right politically…this really does transcend political parties…. have railed against the elites.

8. Labor Unrest
In the 1890s, factory workers faced long hours, low wages, and freaking dangerous conditions, leading to massive strikes like the Homestead Strike of 1892, which saw violent conflict between workers and private security forces the Carnegie Steel Company hired….or the Pullman Strike of 1894, a labor conflict so big that it led to a nationwide boycott of Pullman Company trains. Union membership surged and organizations like the American Federation of Labor became incredibly influential. After this rise of unions, and this really started to take off in the 1890s, citizens voted in politicians to fight back against these corporations exploiting American workers. For the first time ever, governments began to pass laws to demand more fair wages, limit how many hours you had to work, and overall make the workplace a place you were less likely to die in.

In the 2020s, we still have a lot of those laws in place fortunately, but UNFORTUNATELY, a lot of OTHER stuff has still led to worker conditions getting worse.

Workers today face increasing job insecurity due to stuff I mentioned earlier like automation, artificial intelligence, and corporate consolidation…but also stuff like the rise of gig work and stagnant wages relative to productivity. The 2020s has seen a dramatic rise in union membership after decades of decline. More importantly, there’s been a dramatic rise of public approval of unions.

9. A Distrust in Institutions
Due to the aforementioned economic suffering of the time, people not only blamed immigrants, but they blamed OWNERS. Owners of factories, owners of real estate, owners of any asset, really. Populists argued that democratic institutions and the media had been hollowed out by money and insider influence. Due to this, fewer people began to trust ANY institution. There was even a rising movement against vaccines.

Sound familiar? In the 2020s, distrust targets many of the same kinds of institutions- corporations, the media, universities, public health agencies, Congress, and even elections. And yep, there’s a rising anti-vaccine movement today as well, with some vaccine skeptical folks even in power now. 

10. Rising Political Violence
I mentioned the violence of the Homestead Strike and Pullman Strike earlier, but the 1890s also saw the Cripple Creek Strike, an armed conflict between miners, private security, and state militia in Colorado. Lynchings peaked in the 1890s, with hundreds of African Americans straight up murdered outside of the law each year. In what became known as the Wilmington massacre of 1898, a white supremacist mob overthrew a legally elected, multiracial government in Wilmington, North Carolina, killing dozens and permanently ending African American political power in the city. The 1890s saw the increase of political assassinations. Probably the most notable was the assassination of Carter Harrison, the popular mayor of Chicago.
In the 2020s, we are once again seeing a rise of political violence. For the first time in decades, politicians are getting straight up assassinated (Minnesota). A popular YouTuber/podcaster got executed right in front of everyone. Even the current president almost got killed right in front of everyone as he ran for re-election. There was the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. 

11. New Tensions Around the World
In the 1890s, the world was generally going through the late stages of high imperialism. European powers aggressively competed for colonies in Africa and Asia and empires expanded into weaker regions. The British Empire became the biggest empire the world had ever seen. There was also the decline of older empires mixed with new rising powers creating new military buildup and new conflicts overseas.
American imperialism especially be on the rise during this time, for real for real.
During the 1890s, the United States took over Hawaii by force. After easily winning the Spanish-American War, the United States gained the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, then got itself into a prolonged war in the Philippines.
In the 2020s, we’ve seen Russia invade Ukraine, Israel invade Gaza, and the United States invade Venezuela and overthrow its government. And now, the Trump administration is talking about invading Greenland? For some reason? While China seems poised to invade Taiwan. 

Hey speaking of China, this decade may even be a turning point for its status as the world’s biggest superpower. Just as historians discovered the 1890s was when the United States began to overtake the United Kingdom to become the world’s top superpower, the 2020s very well may be the decade future historians say is when China began to overtake the United States to become the world’s top superpower.

12. Rising Protectionism
FREAKING TARIFFS
The 1890s saw peak American protectionism, or the restriction of trade to PROTECT domestic industries from foreign competition. During that decade, high tariffs tried to protect American manufacturers from European imports. Farmers, however, often were against these tariffs as they raised the cost of essential goods while limiting their access to export markets.
I know I’ve said this a few times throughout this video, but…SOUND FAMILIAR?
Here in the 2020s, similar protectionist impulses have come roaring right back. The United States currently has its highest effective tariff rates in nearly 100 years, aimed at China and other global competitors and causing a worldwide trade war. 

-Let’s learn the lessons of the 1890s, maybe?-
So far, the 2020s have shown to be a turbulent decade due to a global pandemic, rising political tensions, and the rise of populism and reactionary politics. We learn history to learn about the lessons of the past so that our species can survive in the future. For the many Americans who are currently terrified about the future and who have absolutely NOT liked how the 2020s have gone here in the United States so far, I’m telling you…we already have a guide for a better future when we look at the 1890s. 

You see, the 1890s marked the tailend of what historians now call the Gilded Age, a time marked by dramatic industrialization and economic growth, but also marked by political corruption and extreme wealth inequality. The phrase came from Mark Twain, who said the era was “gilded” because the wealth of the time was only a thin, superficial layer that masked the darker social problems going on underneath the surface. Well guess what. Now many historians are saying we’re currently living in the SECOND Gilded Age. But don’t lose hope, because just like the Gilded Age ended, so too will the Second Gilded Age. The 1890s also actually marked the beginning of the Progressive Era, a period of widespread reform and activism that saw the expansion of democracy, the rise of labor unions and worker rights, the increased regulation of corporations, antitrust laws, and consumer protection laws. The Progressive Era offers MANY lessons that can give us hope about what the NEXT two decades look like. It doesn’t mean ALL Progressive Era reforms were gravy…Ain’t nobody calling for Prohibition 2.0…but other lessons, like how middle class reformers fought back against corruption, materialism, and the concentration of huge amounts of wealth among a small elite are gold, baby. They’re just gold.

How do we get back on a better path here in the 2020s? How do we SURVIVE the 2020s? Well first, by learning as much as we can about the 1890s.


For those of you wanting to learn more about the decade, here’s one book that inspired me to make this video…The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s by H.W. Brands. It’s a really good book. Really accessible. I found myself shaking my head often while reading it, going “yep, that sounds familiar”...“Yep, THAT sounds familiar.”  

(promote Spectacles)
Thank you for staying curious!
_____________________________________________
^1. https://www.stevenslee.com/health-law-observer-blog/higher-prices-reduced-access-lower-quality-care-hhs-ftc-doj-report-harshly-criticizes-provider-consolidation-and-private-ownership/
^2. https://www.kff.org/health-costs/what-we-know-about-provider-consolidation
^3. Fraser, Steve (2015). The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power. Little, Brown and Company. p. 66.
^4. https://theworlddata.com/top1-income-in-us
^5. https://archive.is/ns6OT
^6. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/williamjenningsbryan1896dnc.htm
​
Sources/further reading:
The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s by H.W. Brands
Purchase here: https://amzn.to/49loBbj 
A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America by Michael McGerr
Purchase here: https://amzn.to/4jY01C1 
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-today-1890s 
https://archive.is/vHD6g
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504630802343432 
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-gilded-age-and-progressive-era/article/abs/bookends-to-a-gentler-capitalism-complicating-the-notion-of-first-and-second-gilded-ages/EAA852693D5A17EC0DAA50D15CC97D43 
https://resobscura.substack.com/p/the-familiar-loneliness-of-the-kinetoscope 
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/4/1/18286084/gilded-age-income-inequality-robber-baron 
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-political-corruption-watchdog-fired-b2697111.html 

Creative commons credits:
Daniel Case 
Us As We Are

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3 Times the World Almost Ended (Released 3/1/2024)
A Brief History of the End of the World (Released 9/27/2024)
"Self-Made" is a myth (Released 6/3/2022)

And as promised, here is the script from my video:
​
Who’s suffering?
My name is Mr. Beat and let me be blunt. (looking over) No, not James Blunt. (You’re beautiful) Oh, thank you.
It’s been really difficult for me to be positive about the future lately. Why? You may ask.
Because it seems we’re living inside every dystopian novel that warned us about the future.

And to be clear, when I say “dystopia,” I mean an imaginary society in which people have lost all their freedoms and lost their humanity and equality.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking…”Oh come on, Beat, it’s not THAT bad.” And I’m not saying we’re in a literal apocalypse. But some of the themes these authors warned us about? They aren’t just “futuristic” anymore. They’re just…the present.

Let’s break it down. Let’s just go through seven of the big ones- the most popular dystopian novels…many of which we were forced to read in school growing up. We’ll go through them one by one. Oh yes. One by one. Starting with…

1984- The Death of Privacy and Truth
Let’s start with the most popular, the one that most of you are probably already aware of because people bring up so much that it's kinda annoying. George Orwell’s 1984.

When Orwell wrote about Big Brother, he imagined a world where the Thought Police watched you through “Telescreens” that could never be turned off. And indeed, people used to be terrified of the government putting cameras in their homes. But here’s the twist: we didn’t need an authoritarian government to force them on us. We BOUGHT them. We often call them “smart.” Smartphones, smart speakers, smart TVs, smart thermostats, smart locks, smart doorbells, smart appliances, smart lights, smart vacuums, smart baby monitors…basically if they have a camera and an internet connection, one could make a compelling argument that they are just like the Telescreens Orwell wrote about in 1984. All of these smart devices are spying on us.^1 Through them giant media companies are gathering a lot of personal information about you…even information as sensitive as your GPS location, your search history, or your heart rate and blood pressure… and then these media companies are turning around and regularly selling that personal information to who the heck knows.

Hey, speaking of which, this video is once again sponsored in part by DeleteMe.

Hey did you know I get death threats? True story. I guess it’s because I have opinions sometimes that some people disagree with. Anyway, due to this, in recent years I’ve really stepped up my personal privacy efforts online. Gotta make sure the unstable folks can’t look up my personal information…stuff like my address or phone number. And one of the best ways I’ve found to prevent this from happening? Using DeleteMe. DeleteMe proactively removes our home address, phone numbers, and family details from the internet. What I like about DeleteMe is that it sends you these personalized privacy reports showing what they found, where they found it, and what they DELETED. I’ve been using it for several years at this point and it’s done a really good job scrubbing my personal information from all kinds of messed up sites out there. 
Hey, this is…like…the easiest New Year’s resolution ever. Protect YOUR personal information and your family’s personal information with DeleteMe. And get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans when you go to joindeleteme.com/mrbeat and use promo code MRBEAT at checkout (QR code on screen). That’s join delete me dot com/MRBEAT, code MRBEAT. 

A pretty dang relevant sponsor this time around. Let’s go back to literally 1984.

But modern Big Brother surveillance isn’t just our smart devices spying on us and stealing our data. In Orwell’s 1984, if you made the wrong face, the authoritarian government of Oceania would arrest you. A Facecrime. Well, today facial recognition software can scan a crowd of thousands and pick out a single protester within seconds. We’ve built a surveillance net so advanced that even Orwell would shake his head.

The authoritarian government of Oceania in the novel also created Newspeak, a highly controlled and oversimplified language to limit a person’s ability to critically think. Today, we see this in “Corporate Speak” that encourages conformity. We don’t “fire people,” we “right-size the talent pool.” We don’t have “civilian casualties,” we have "collateral damage.” When language becomes a tool to hide the truth rather than express it, Big Brother isn’t just watching…he’s talking right through us.

And speaking of the truth…in the novel, the authoritarian government of Oceania’s ultimate goal was to make you believe that 2+2=5. Why? Well, because if they can make you deny the most basic facts of reality, they own you. Fast forward to 2026, and while we don’t have a “Ministry of Truth,” we do have “alternative facts.” We have algorithms that create filter bubbles where you only see news that confirms what you already believe. We’ve reached the point where two neighbors can live on the same street but inhabit two entirely different realities. Worst of all, we apparently have a government telling us we can’t believe what we see or hear, seemingly telling us to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.

Animal Farm- The Corruption of Power
Heck, you could even throw in George Orwell’s earlier masterpiece, Animal Farm.

In the book, animals overthrow their human oppressors for equality. They establish laws to promote equality known as the Seven Commandments, with the final one being “All animals are equal.” But the pigs slowly corrupt the revolution and soon it becomes “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” One of the pigs, Squealer, spreads a bunch of propaganda to fool the other animals into NOT SEEING that the revolution has been corrupted. Basically, Animal Farm is a brutal allegory for how revolutions often get hijacked by power-hungry leaders and how propaganda twists the truth.

And today? Well really throughout history but also today? We see people in power not held accountable for breaking the law. We see leaders who promise reforms but end up seeming to forget those reforms once they’re in power…instead just consolidating their power. This echoes the pigs’ betrayal. The modern “Squealers” are hack pundits and spin doctors who spend 14 hours a day convincing us that down is up and illegal, supposedly temporary measures passed 25 years ago are now permanent necessities. It’s the Seven Commandments approach to law…the rules haven’t changed, you’re just misremembering them dude.  

Brave New World- The Golden Cage
Probably the most disturbingly accurate dystopian novel I’ve ever read is Aldous (al duhs) Huxley’s Brave New World.

1 minute mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWPrOvzzqZk&t 
Indeed, while Orwell feared we’d be controlled by pain, Aldous Huxley feared we’d be controlled more by PLEASURE. In Brave New World, an authoritarian government keeps its citizens in a state of shallow, mindless bliss through a drug called Soma (that doesn’t cause a hangover) and endless, extremely engaging…yet trivial… entertainment. 

Well well, doesn’t THAT sound familiar. We are currently the most medicated and overstimulated humans in history. Sure, never before has it been easier to get access to drugs to make the pain go away, but we also have an infinite “Soma” drip right in our pockets. In fact, I might be interrupting your “Soma” drip right now. In our attention economy, everyday we are constantly bombarded with endless entertainment and distractions on our phones, from outrage cycles on social media to gamified shopping on Temu to scrolling millions of videos on TikTok to 24/7 Twitch streamers, constantly giving us dopamine hits before we can even process what we’re looking at. Not that much different than how the babies in Huxley’s Brave New World are conditioned in the Hatcheries, this endless entertainment and convenience conditions us to value comfort over everything else.

There’s also a strict social hierarchy in Brave New World, a caste system basically based on genetics. Each caste is indoctrinated to prefer members of their own caste and wear uniforms with different colors identifying their caste. In our world, innovations in genetics like CRISPR raise designer-baby questions, and social hierarchies, mostly based on wealth, are only getting worse, it seems, as social mobility declines.

Huxley’s warning was that we would come to LOVE our oppression. We’d trade our political agency and privacy for convenience and personalized recommendations. We wouldn’t be forced into a cage. We’d willingly just….walk right into that freaking cage. Indeed, it seems that many of us aren’t being forced to obey, we’re being entertained into indifference.

Fahrenheit 451- The End of the Deep Dive
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 45, another one that hopefully you were forced to read in school, explores similar themes to Brave New World.

In the Fahrenheit 451, “firemen” burn books because books are made up of conflicting ideas, and conflicting ideas make people sad. 

Today? Well, censorship HAS increased, even in places known for free speech like the United States. And sure, literal book bans have also been on the rise, often targeting stories about marginalized groups.

But Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is about much more than censorship. Bradbury himself told interviewers the book was about OUR OWN media consuming habits more than anything else. You see, DUE to the book burnings and censorship seen in Fahrenheit 451, society drowns in shallow entertainment and anti-intellectualism and chooses conformity over the truth. Bradbury saw a future in which people were so obsessed with the people on their wall-sized black mirrors that they lost the ability to have a conversation with their actual neighbors. People became more lonely. 

And today? Doom scrolling and viral videos prioritize quick hits over deep thought. Nuance is lost. If I can’t explain a complex geopolitical conflict in a short “explainer” video, people lose interest. We are self-censoring these days, man…so much that we often refuse to engage with anything that challenges our echo chambers. We easily fall for fake news. We seem to be losing our ability to just…sit…with a difficult idea. We’re metaphorically burning our own books by refusing to read anything longer than a caption. Why read a whole book when you can just watch the TikTok summary? In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury feared we’d lose our minds to the “Seashell” earbuds. (taking out earbuds) Oh. Good thing this video is not sponsored by Raycon…or Blinkist. And finally, yep…loneliness seems to be worse than ever right now.

The Handmaid’s Tale- Rights Are Made Up
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which recently was adapted into a pretty successful TV series, hits pretty close to home for a lot of people right now.

Atwood has repeatedly said she mostly just put stuff in the book that is based on events that have already really happened throughout history. In the story, a patriarchal, authoritarian country known as the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, terrorizes women and treats them as second-class citizens, and justifies it using the Old Testament of the Bible. The theocratic regime of Gilead completely controls women’s bodies amid environmental collapse and infertility. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBgdaZ0Xxr4 
Today, a return to abortion restrictions in the United States, a backlash against birth control, the renewed push for “traditional” family structures…and the associated tradwives trend….and the rise of Christian nationalism, are causing protestors to literally dress up as handmaids from Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. After all, the slow, incremental chipping away at rights, often justified by “tradition” or “family values” is exactly how Atwood’s dystopia began. The Handmaid’s Tale reminds us that progress isn’t a one-way street. Rights, once gained, are never truly secure and can be lost through apathy or reactionary legislation. Sure, the handmaid’s uniform might not be real, but the battles over who controls women’s bodies? Oh they be very real.

Parable of the Sower- Greed Above All Else
Here’s a lesser known, but still a classic. Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. 

First of all, though Parable of the Sower came out in 1993, it’s freaking set in the 2020s. The story follows an extremely empathetic young woman who becomes displaced from her relatively safe, gated community but then ends up starting basically a religion. In Butler’s dystopia, corporate greed has led to the total collapse of the middle class and…you guessed it… environmental catastrophe. Gated communities like the one the main character lives in have become armed fortresses, and people outside of the gated communities are in dire poverty and barely surviving. But heck, even in some of the gated communities water is scarce. 

Now, the real 2020s are nearly as bad as the 2020s in the Parable of the Sower, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t trending in the wrong direction. Each year, environmental catastrophes, skyrocketing inequality, and the mass migration of refugees from disaster zones seemingly gets worse. Gated communities are even on the rise.^2 More and more public spaces are becoming privatized.^3
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Butler’s Parable of the Sower shows a world that is increasingly more desperate, and, due to that, more cruel. Yeah, this one hits a little too close to home.

The Hunger Games- A Cruel Game that the Privileged Don’t Have to Play
You might think this one’s a wild pick, but I picked this one because it’s more metaphorical, ok?

Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, which is technically a trilogy and has prequels and later became a wildly popular movie series and basically a franchise at this point, is way more than just about kids fighting. It’s about the myth of social mobility. In the fictional country of Panem (pan uhm), a very wealthy and powerful group of people in the Capitol completely exploit the rest of the country through authoritarian control, ridiculous inequality, and…yes…spectacle violence. The rich watch the poor suffer for entertainment while maintaining power through fear and division. The book title is the name of such…violent spectacle. Every year in the Hunger Games, two children…one boy and one girl…from each poor district are randomly selected and then forced to play in what’s essentially a battle royale death match.

Ok, so you might be wondering, what the heck does the Hunger Games have to do with today? Yeah. That’s a good question.

While we don’t have kids fighting in arenas to the death, (well we kind of do) we do live in a world where major urban wealth centers thrive (kind of like the Capitol) and rural areas or certain parts of the world struggle with poverty (kind of like the Districts). The Capitol extracts everything from the Districts while giving nothing back, which is kind of a metaphor for how global capitalism and neo-imperialism exploit labor and resources from poorer parts of the world to fuel First World luxury. We watch reality TV that exploits and profits from people suffering. 

More than anything, though, we see in the book series that the Capitol spreads the myth that the system is fair. This parallels the myth of upward social mobility for anyone. Ya know, what we call here in the United States (sing) The American Dream. That anyone can be successful through hard work and determination. Occasionally, someone poor DOES make it to the top, just like how occasionally someone poor wins the Hunger Games, eh? Ya gotta give them SOME hope.

Writing a Better Ending
Ok, sure…I must admit that, most of us are pretty far from dystopia. While there are dystopian aspects of modern society here in the 2020s, that doesn’t mean we don’t have any freedoms. In fact, odds are, if you’re watching this video right now, you still have a LOT of freedom to do what you want whenever you want. 

My point of making this video is to never take these freedoms for granted. They can be taken away in an instant. More importantly, just because YOU still have freedoms, that doesn’t mean EVERYONE around currently has the same freedoms as you.

Dystopian novels aren’t meant to be instruction manuals, man. They’re supposed to be cautionary tales. They are meant to wake us up. 

In each and every one of these books, an individual who refuses to forget the truth rises up to resist the authoritarians in power. Sometimes it starts with a diary, a single, small act of rebellion, or even a single act of empathy. 

And because we still have lots of freedoms, we still have the power to change the ending of this hypothetical mashup of dystopian novels. We can still turn off the Big Brother devices, put down the Soma, and start treating each other like neighbors instead of “data points.”

As the great philosopher Natasha Bedingfield once sang, “Today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten.” You still have the power to determine what the next chapter will look like. Please send this video to every billionaire you know.



But hey, what the heck do I know? What book do YOU think best describes the current era we are living in? Let me know by yelling at me in public. Oh, and just a reminder that we must call out traitors to the human race. Also, just another reminder that you are obligated to become smart at something. Ok. Thank you for staying curious.

​Disclaimer: Mr. Beat offers opinions in this video
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^1.  https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/advice-smart-devices-data-tracking/
^2. https://luskin.ucla.edu/prof-minjee-kim-weighs-in-on-the-rise-of-gated-communities-in-the-u-s
^3.  https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/global-policy-lab/living-cities-privatizing-public-spaces/

Can't get enough of this video? Here are some related videos:

The Vietnam War Explained (Released 5/10/2024)
What Was Watergate?  (Released 4/1/2022)
The Free Soil Party Explained (Released 9/21/2018)
The American Presidential Election of 1820  (Released 7/15/2015)
The American Presidential Election of 1824 (Released 8/3/2015)
A Brief History of the Whig Party (Released 1/2/2014)
Where the American Civil War REALLY Began (Released 9/5/2025)
Party Systems: Crash Course Government and Politics #41 (Crash Course)
Timeline of US Political Parties (Useful Charts)

And as promised, here is the script from my video:

What era are you in right now?
My name is Mr. Beat, and I’m in my FREAKING OUT ABOUT THE FUTURE era. 
Anyway, what about the eras of American politics? Huh? What about them? Answer me, Cumberbatch!

While political scientists and historians have divided up American political history into different TYPES of eras, arguably the most popular way they have done this is by what’s called “The Party System.” The Party System refers to the different eras in American political history in which both the political beliefs and voters of the two major political parties remained fairly consistent. 

The Party System gets its name due to the fact that Americans always like to party. (stare blankly at camera)

Just kidding. The Party System gets its name due to the fact that it has political parties, or basically big teams that organize to elect people to public office that generally share the same political views. When the United States first started, political parties didn’t exist. In fact, the beloved first president, George Washington, warned against them. However, George must have got really sad when political parties formed anyway. 

But you don’t need to cry, George. There are only TWO political parties. Well, two MAJOR ones. There are at least dozens of smaller political parties which we call “third parties.” The two major ones you’ve probably heard of ‘cause you’re smart and stuff. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

Clone (from above): But wait… 
Look up
why are there only two MAJOR ones that tend to control everything? Punk!

That’s because, at the federal level anyway, the United States has plurality voting, or voting in which a citizen only gets to vote for ONE candidate, and the candidate who gets the most votes, aka a plurality, wins the election. EVEN IF THEY DON’T GET THE MAJORITY OF VOTES. This “winner-takes-all” electoral system has historically discouraged third parties…and thus, the United States mostly just has a two-party system, and BECAUSE  the country has had a persistent two-party system since political parties first became a THING….the country has gone through SEVERAL party systems. In the early years of the republic, there were totally different political parties. Over the past 171 years…give or take…we’ve had the same two major political parties, the aforementioned Republican and Democratic parties. But the Republican Party of today is VERY DIFFERENT than the Republican Party of 171 years ago, and the Democratic Party of today is VERY DIFFERENT than the Democratic Party of 171 years ago. I mean, you should have seen this channel 171 years ago. Back then, I was only posting videos of unboxing squishies. Times have changed.

Anyway, party systems exist because political parties are constantly shifting their priorities in order to keep winning elections. In doing so, political parties evolve and even end up completely changing their minds about political issues. At one point, the Republican Party was the party of reform, then it slowly became more conservative over time. At one time, if you were a member of the Ku Klux Klan, you were probably a proud member of Democratic Party. Now? If you’re a member of the Ku Klux Klan, uhhh….yeah…you are almost certainly not a member of the Democratic Party. At various points in American history, the two major political parties actually weren’t that different at all when it came to most issues and policies.

In this video, let’s break down the Six Party Systems of American political history.
Clone: Wait…
Look up
Clone: I thought there were now SEVEN Party Systems in American political history. 
Six….seven 

-The First Party System (1792-1824)-
The First Party System emerged soon after the Constitution got ratified. 
On one side, you had the Federalist Party, led by folks like Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, who favored a strong federal government, a national bank, and more trade with Britain. The Federalists were generally associated with the elites and those who lived in cities. On the other side, you had the Democratic-Republican Party, not to be confused with the Democratic Party or the uh…Republican Party of today…led by folks like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. They favored a weaker federal government (which usually meant more states’ rights), more trade and better relations with France, and yes...were generally AGAINST a national bank.

Well, the Federalists started to dramatically lose power during the War of 1812, and by 1820 the Democratic Republicans were so dominant that President James Monroe ran for re-election virtually unopposed. However, after the economy went to the crapper and after the passing of the Missouri Compromise, which increased tensions over the expansion of slavery out west, the Democratic Republican Party would begin to splinter, leading to the end of the First Party System.

-The Second Party System (1824-1854)-
The Second Party System is often associated with the sharp rise of democracy and populism in the United States and it all started because of one man. For example, for the first time, ALL white men could vote around the country instead of just rich, property-owning white men. And yep, the Second Party System is when we saw the creation of the Democratic Party, which completely revolved around Andrew Jackson, who kinda got screwed over in the presidential election of 1824. He won the PLURALITY of votes, but still lost the election. Well, Andrew Jackson absolutely FREAKED OUT a bunch of other American politicians. They’d end up forming their own political party literally known as the Anti-Jackson Party but aka the National Republican Party. They’re just really unoriginal with names, ok? After the country’s first third party, the Anti-Masonic Party, became a thing, it and pretty much all other Anti-Jackson groups united to form the Whig Party. 
So again. Yeah. Congrats, Andrew Jackson. You created the Second Party System.
On the Democratic Party side, led by folks like not just Jackson but also Martin Van Buren, they tended to be for expanding democracy (obviously), VERY against a national bank, against high tariffs, against elitism, FOR a weaker federal government (more states’ rights), and FOR the territorial expansion of the United States, even if it meant stealing land and killing people to get it. On the Whig Party side, led by folks like Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, they basically were for everything Andrew Jackson was against. They wanted a national bank, a stronger federal government, higher tariffs, and were even implicitly cool with elitism. Speaking of a stronger federal government, the Whigs tended to support large infrastructure projects that could ONLY be financed by the federal government. Oh, and the Whigs generally were against the territorial expansion of the United States, especially during the Mexican–American War.

Never as tight of a coalition as the Democratic Party was anyway, the Whigs began to splinter by the early 1850s, and the main thing they disagreed about? The expansion of slavery out west. In fact, new third parties emerged like the Liberty Party and Free Soil Party completely focused on the slavery issue. After the Kansas–Nebraska Act got rid of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, thus making a LOT of abolitionist northerners mad, the Whig Party completely collapsed and a new third party, the Republican Party, would form. 

-The Third Party System (1854-1896)-
The Third Party System highly revolved around the American Civil War.
The issue of slavery, which obviously was THE main underlying cause of the Civil War, caused the Third Party System to happen to begin with, but the war continued to have huge political influence even decades after it ended. Despite this being a distinct political era marked by rising American nationalism, a push toward modernization, and the Gilded Age, a period known for extreme wealth inequality and corruption, the Democratic Party survived, mostly because it adapted to the changing times. Still, it was the aforementioned REPUBLICAN party that DOMINATED during the Third Party System. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who is often also considered the GREATEST American president was EXTREMELY influential, and pretty much every Republican politician following him during this era was tryin’ to be the next Lincoln. I mean, they even all had beards. Led by Lincoln and later folks like Ulysses Grant, the Republican Party generally was for equal rights for African Americans…well, African American MEN…, FOR a stronger federal government, FOR higher tariffs, and for Reconstruction policies, or when the federal government had a much heavier role over state governments as southern states got reorganized and re-entered the Union following the Civil War.

This time, the Democratic Party didn’t have as tight of a coalition. You had folks in the party for the gold standard but others passionately against it, for example. Led by folks like Stephen Douglass and then later Grover Cleveland, they generally were against equal rights for African Americans, FOR a weaker federal government (more states’ rights), against higher tariffs, and against Reconstruction policies. 
And due to the Civil War, the two major political parties during this time were often split geographically- Democratic Party voters were overwhelmingly in the South and Republican Party voters were overwhelmingly in the North. 

By the 1890s, a new third party called the People’s Party and a broader populist movement had taken the country by storm, and new issues became more important to voters, such as ending monopolies, restricting the consumption of alcohol, worker rights, and consumer protection laws. While both the Democratic and Republican parties would survive this time, they only did so because they dramatically changed their platforms. Plus, the country had been going through its longest and most severe economic depression yet.

-The Fourth Party System (1896-1932)-
Most of the Fourth Party System was dominated by The Progressive Era, that period of widespread reform and activism between roughly  1890 and 1920.

Sure, the economy had recovered by the late 1890s, but Americans had not forgotten the damage giant corporations had done to the country. Suddenly both the Republican Party AND Democratic Party had become reform-minded, supporting things like taxing the super wealthy, breaking up monopolies, ending corruption in politics, expanding worker rights, and expanding democracy, which included giving women the right to vote and letting citizens directly elect their U.S. Senators.

Still, the two major political parties had their differences. 
On the Democratic Party side, led by folks like Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan, they tended to be against imperialism and more for free trade and deregulation, while the Republican Party, led by folks like William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, tended to be pro-imperialism, for MORE protectionism, and for MORE laws regulating businesses. Due to Republicans being more proactive on progressive legislation, they were the dominant political party during the Fourth Party System. I mean, Woodrow Wilson mostly got elected due to a split within the Republican Party between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

Speaking of split, World War One and its aftermath momentarily saw the Republican Party unify, but flash forward to 1929 and now the country was going through The Great Depression, the worst global economic crisis in history. Because the Republican Party was the party in power and was at least partially to blame for making the depression worse, suddenly the Democratic Party became very popular.

-The Fifth Party System (1932-1980)-
The Fifth Party System is also often called the New Deal Party System due to its close association with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. 
The New Deal was a series of reforms put into place by Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression. They not only had the goal of ending the Depression and aiding Americans hurt by it, but also creating laws and programs to make sure something like the Depression would never happen again. And sure, the New Deal didn’t end the Great Depression, but these reforms were so popular that Roosevelt became extremely popular. To this date he’s the only one to ever get elected president four times. And after Roosevelt died, future presidents and politicians…both in Roosevelt’s Democratic Party but also in the opposing Republican Party, mostly worked hard to preserve and even expand the New Deal. For example, the Democrat president Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs were basically just an extension of the New Deal.

So yeah, on the Democratic Party side, led by folks like Roosevelt and Johnson, they generally supported expanding the federal government in the name of protecting social welfare, expanding civil rights, expanding worker rights, and social liberalism. The Republican Party, on the other hand, led by folks like Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, wanted to keep the federal government a BIT smaller when protecting social welfare, thought STATES should generally expand civil rights, generally supported business interests over worker rights, and social conservatism.

But similar to the Fourth Party System, both of the major political parties had very similar economic and foreign policies during the Fifth Party System, especially with regards to strong opposition to the Soviet Union and its Communist government and command economy. After all, this era overlapped quite a bit with the Cold War.

The Fifth Party System began to collapse for two reasons. First, events like the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal caused a LOT of Americans to lose trust in the federal government. And second, the rise of Ronald Reagan and similar limited government Republicans convinced tens of millions of Americans that https://youtu.be/G8jV_1G9Yj4?si=2ypTdbxvzS-a2J6I&t=242 
Oh, and did I mention the country was also going through another economic crisis? Stagflation. 

-The Sixth Party System (1980-2016)-
The Sixth Party System was dominated by two things: neoliberalism and neoconservativism. Neo and Neo. (looking over) Oh yeah, that Neo was popular during this time as well.
Neoliberalism is a political movement that prioritizes personal liberty and free market competition. Neoconversativism is a political movement that promotes aggressively spreading American values…typically CONSERVATIVE values... around the world, even if that means military intervention. During the Sixth Party System, both the Republican Party and Democratic Party spent decades mostly on the same page when it came to both economic and foreign policy, whether people who lived through this time are willing to admit it or not. And yet, just like with the Third Party System, the two major political parties during this time were often split geographically, but this time Democratic Party voters were overwhelmingly in the North and Republican Party voters were overwhelmingly in the South. 

On the Republican Party side, led by folks like Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney…yeah I’m not kidding….Dick Cheney….they generally supported more aggressive foreign policy, lowering taxes as much as possible, and social conservatism. On the Democratic Party side, led by folks like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, they generally supported a less aggressive foreign policy, higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for more social programs, and social progressivism. Indeed, the Sixth Party System is when we saw lots of progress on social issues…from same-sex marriage to the legalization of cannabis to the growing acceptance of the transgender community. However, it’s also when we saw growing polarization, polarization more dramatic than anything the country had ever seen going back all the way to right before the Civil War.

Woah woah woah now, I’m not saying the United States is about to enter another civil war. But we are going through some major changes right now.

More than anything, the collapse of the Sixth Party System seems to be a backlash to the extreme wealth inequality and increase in government corruption we’ve seen since The Great Recession, as well as a backlash to VERY unpopular foreign interventions like the Iraq War and War in Afghanistan. Over the last few years, we’ve seen both the Democratic Party AND Republican start to rebel against free trade and even capitalism itself.

-The Seventh Party System (2016-present)-
Yes, my clone was right
Thank you!
In my opinion, we are now in the Seventh Party System, and I think it’s mostly because of one man. (pause) Ok, maybe two.

And that man was Donald Trump. Him becoming president has changed the Republican Party, man. It’s now more populist, nationalist, and protectionist. I mean, a great example of this is the fact that the United States currently has its highest effective tariff rate since the early 1930s.

It has increasingly rejected internationalism, or the cooperation and collaboration among different nations. It has increasingly rejected both neoconservatism and neoliberalism while embracing postliberalism, a political movement that promotes the idea that both liberalism and individualism are hurting society more than helping it.

But it’s probably not just Trump. The Democratic Party is changing, too.

Folks like Bernie Sanders, who nearly got the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency in both 2016 and 2020, have also been influential in helping the party embrace populism and move further to the left on economic issues. During the Seventh Party System, the Republican Party has had more success reaching rural voters and the Democratic Party has had more success reaching college-educated suburban voters. 

Now, I should say that there are political scientists out there who disagree with me. But they’re full of crap. (What the heck?!?)  I’m kidding. That was mean. They make good points.

The fact that political polarization still persists, that yeah…sure…the PRESIDENCY may have changed but CONGRESS hasn’t changed so much since the Sixth Party System, or it’s just too darn early to analyze this since some of this stuff happening recently might just be temporary blips….these are all reasons why other political scientists argue we’re still in the Sixth Party System.
Then again, there are even OTHER political scientists out there who argue we’re still in the Fifth Party System. So who the heck knows. All this stuff is made up anyway. (stare at camera)

But what do YOU think? Do you agree with me that the United States is currently in the Seventh Party System? Or do you NOT agree with me? How dare you. But wait, why? Why the heck would you not agree with me you dillweed. Sorry. That was harsh. Look, just try to explain yourself in the comments and perhaps we have a constructive dialogue. We can work this out. Alright then. Go on. Start typing away. Thanks for staying curious.
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Sources/further reading:
The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development by William Nisbet Chalmers
https://archive.org/details/americanpartysys00will
The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History by Michael Kazin, Rebecca Edwards, and Adam Rothman
Purchase here: https://amzn.to/3YQZ4Sp 
Parties and Elections in America: The Electoral Process by Mark D. Brewer and L. Sandy Maisel
Purchase here: https://amzn.to/3NoWctm 
The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era by Richard McCormick
Purchase here: https://amzn.to/4pgNmLu 
The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America by Elmer Eric Schattschneider https://archive.org/details/semisovereignpeo00scha 
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/25/upshot/trump-era-republicans-democrats.html
Parties, Interest Groups, and Political Campaigns by Matthew J. Burbank, Ronald J. Hrebenar, and Robert C. Benedict https://archive.org/details/partiesinterestg0000burb 
Schlesinger, Arthur Jr. (1999). The Cycles of American History. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_eras_of_the_United_States

Creative commons:
Jonathunder 
David Shankbone 
Ragesoss 
Fibonacci Blue
Alec Perkins

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