I’m sure you recognize we’re in the throes of a midterm election year. You’re inundated by a flood of partisan advocacy and political brand marketing insisting that your well-being — if not your very existence — hinges on the next vote.
I love voting. I love democracy. They’re essential.
But I also like to offer variety in your media diet, and a little counterprogramming in the form of broader historical perspective.
What if all the partisans — shuffling around PAC money and jockeying for proximity to power — are directionally correct but missing the bigger picture? 2026 isn’t a monumental year on its own terms. What we should really consider is how the 2020s may qualify as the most significant decade of our lives for lasting historical impact.
I know, I know: this is a foolish exercise before at least a generation has passed to give us perspective — let alone to lob it out in the middle of the decade. In the words of a PBS icon I deeply admire, Ken Burns, we should “get a little bit nervous when you get within 25 years” of judging someone or something’s historical merits.
So, apologies to all my historian friends. Consider this a writerly and journalistic thought experiment — albeit an earnest one. I’m writing it because I deeply feel it. Once I started piercing it together, I couldn’t stop. The 2020s as our pivotal era took shape in my head, then spilled out into emails to a handful of experts and, finally, onto the page.
First, let me preempt a few objections:
For those alive in the 1940s, the defeat of Nazi Germany and the development of nuclear weapons rival anything since.
I also don’t want to discount the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s in the United States, or the emergence of the post-rock ’n’ roll youth counterculture still driving our commerce.
I grant those massive milestones (and no doubt others you’ll list in the comments).
One of the historians I reached out to was Tyler Priest, associate professor of history at the University of Iowa.
“It might be premature to say that the 2020s might be the ‘most significant decade’ of our lifetimes,” he wrote, “but there is no denying the momentous societal ruptures we have experienced in recent years.”
Another was Nicholas Proctor, professor of history at Simpson College in Indianola, who weighed in, he said, more as an educator than as a historian.
With inspiration from them and other sources, and as a Gen Xer born in the ‘70s, here’s my case for the ruptures that add up to what I’ll call the “Roaring Radical Twenties”:
COVID-19: It helps the hypothesis that we began the decade with a global pandemic whose effects still linger: loss of trust in public health institutions, pivots to hybrid and remote work, supply chain disruptions and economic inflation, setbacks in education and mental health — and on and on. I could devote an entire newsletter to mining this deep and seemingly inexhaustible vein.
AI: You’re probably surprised I didn’t list this first. The rise of the robots is (over)inflating our economy, reshaping workplaces, guzzling water and other natural resources, and rewiring our brains — arguably at a scale beyond the original development of the internet. I’m neither an AI doomer nor zoomer. I simply tend to remain slightly optimistic about this innovative tool — and it is merely a tool, not our savior, not our downfall. With any technology this powerful on the business frontier, I always expect the need to battle the timeless stampede of human greed. We must properly harness AI; suppressing technology has never been much of a feature of the U.S. specifically or humanity generally. (I guess that takes us back to the existential threat of nukes, but I digress.)
Space exploration: More frontier technology: This year’s Artemis II moon mission offered welcome inspiration — and distraction from our earthly conflicts. It also reminded us of our current roadmap to Mars. You don’t need to buy into everything on the SpaceX agenda about “making life interplanetary” to retain some vestige of Apollo-era optimism in the intrinsic good of yearning to explore, slip the surly bonds of earth, and maybe learn more than we ever imagined in the process. Will the 2020s represent a shift from visiting space to inhabiting it?
Executive power: We’ve been sorely testing the limits of executive power in the U.S. for at least a century, depending on how you construct the timeline. It may be fair to say the 2020s stand a chance to complete an arc from Franklin D. Roosevelt and his fireside chats over radio to Donald Trump and his Truth Social smartphone barrage. Will Congress wake up, reassert its authority on behalf of the people, and restore a clearer separation of powers? When the partisans start crowing about 2028 as the inflection point of our lifetimes, remember: the case for the 2020s will only be more powerful. Another way to frame our executive-power test is as a global resurgence of right-wing nationalism and populism — a fair point made by Priest. Proctor touched on it, too, from the angle of political polarization, with today’s students feeling like they’re watching a government rendered incapable of much of anything by an inept political class.
Drone warfare: After more than four years of the Russia-Ukraine war, we’re realizing how drone technology is permanently changing the modern battlefield. No version of war, no matter how mechanized and bloodless, is anything less than horrific; I’m certainly not celebrating this as a positive trend. I’m sure many of you just had a scene from the “Terminator” franchise flash through your mind. Even a little past the midpoint of the decade, it’s easy to imagine ending the 2020s with an entirely transformed concept of military might. (Well, once again, except for nukes.)
Energy sources: As the driver of a hybrid vehicle, I’m still waiting impatiently for the invention of a perpetual battery to solve all our energy needs. In the meantime, the 2020s could prove pivotal. We’re currently witnessing the energy implications of our war with Iran and the bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz. Priest’s specialty happens to be energy and oil. On one hand, we’ve seen a surge in renewables in the form of, say, electric vehicles — 25% of new cars globally, Priest said, and a whopping 95% in Europe. But that doesn’t change our underlying reliance on fossil fuels in some form. “We are experiencing the worst energy crisis since the 1970s and likely the worst ever,” he wrote. “Americans have yet to feel the full brunt of it. The coming shock will reconfigure the global market for hydrocarbons and energy and reshape the Persian Gulf/Middle East in ways not seen since the 1970s.” What’s more, the rise of AI and data centers, he added, is premised on an expansion of natural gas power plants. “Natural gas will become the fuel of the 21st century,” he wrote, adding that “the United States is well-positioned as the world’s largest natural gas producer.” Proctor, meanwhile, touched on the energy crisis through his love of trains. “Our addiction to petrochemicals, nonsensical opposition to renewables, and incomprehensible inability to build infrastructure other than pipelines and highways make me realize that I will always need to go out of my way to ride a train just about anywhere in the U.S.,” he wrote.
At this point, I’m only more convinced the “Radical Twenties” fits like a glove. I’ve blown past 1,000 words and feel as if I’ve only scraped the surface.
Priest also cited the acceleration of global warming, with 2023 through 2025 ranking as the warmest years on record by far.
Or what about the potential for a new era of U.S.-China relations, good or bad?
Both professors referred to the influence of smartphones and social media in contributing to declines in everything from literacy to … fertility.
Ken Burns would tell me to wait 25 years before calling any of this, and he’d be right. At least some of this will seem quaint by 2050, and the real story may be something I didn’t think to mention.
Vote in the midterms. Pay attention to horserace politics and 2028. But save a little brainpower for the longer frame — the megatrends that may add up to this historic decade.
Check back with me in 2051 on whether the Radical Twenties really rings true.
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