In 2008, I published a book with a straightforward premise: the upcoming era of American politics would be defined by a competition between the Left and Right to harness the working class’s intensifying rage in a society being pillaged by corporate interests.

It was the twilight of the George W. Bush era, and the country was beginning its nosedive into recession and turmoil, but hope and change seemed just over the horizon. I predicted that with elements of both political parties in a warrior stance, simmering conflicts over deindustrialization, financialization, and neoliberalism would soon explode and realign politics, birthing some American version of either social democracy or authoritarianism.

The sixteen years since The Uprising was released have delivered much of the tumult I imagined. It has been a period of unrest, chaos, and flip-flopping control of government — and yet, amid all that volatility, the decline persisted. Whether medical bankruptcies, foreclosures, lower lifespans, spikes in prices, mountains of paperwork, or endless junk fees attached to everything — life in America just kept getting more difficult, annoying, inhumane, painful, and seemingly impossible.