you could easily set the starting point much earlier than 1989.
OP is not asserting that the current period of instability started in 1989: his reference to that year is his (too concise?) way of saying that if the Soviet Union could suddenly unravel, it could happen here.
IMHO the current period of instability started about 10 years ago. Occupy Wall Street happened in 2011, and although it got a decent amount of press (and the most dissatisfied elements of society hoped that it would be start of a broader upturning of society) it had almost no effect on the broader society. Moreover, the mere fact that the more radical parts of the press put so much of their hope into it is a sign that in 2011 there was actually no hope for radical change.
In other words, I’m taking Occupy as evidence of stability: radical journalists are pretty smart as a group, so if the only thing they can find to write about is Occupy, that is a strong sign that there’s actually no hope at present of radical change.
George Friedman says that the US undergoes intervals of unrest about every 60 years. The previous period of unrest IMO ended about 1973, the year when the US military completely withdrew from Vietnam. Remember that during the previous period of unrest, there was an organization (the Weather Underground) of at least 1000 members actively trying to overthrow the US government using riots and bombs.
During the period from 1973 to about 2013, which I claim was a period of stability, the professionals that run election campaigns learned that conservative Christians could be harnessed as a powerful voting bloc because they’re “well organized” (i.e., can be effectively led by church leaders) and of course the liberals reacted against that (successfully, IMO) in what is usually called the Culture Wars, but IIRC the Culture Wars never went beyond words and votes whereas the 2020 BLM protests had a few politically-motivated killings, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_and_Michael_Reinoehl
OP is not asserting that the current period of instability started in 1989: his reference to that year is his (too concise?) way of saying that if the Soviet Union could suddenly unravel, it could happen here.
IMHO the current period of instability started about 10 years ago. Occupy Wall Street happened in 2011, and although it got a decent amount of press (and the most dissatisfied elements of society hoped that it would be start of a broader upturning of society) it had almost no effect on the broader society. Moreover, the mere fact that the more radical parts of the press put so much of their hope into it is a sign that in 2011 there was actually no hope for radical change.
In other words, I’m taking Occupy as evidence of stability: radical journalists are pretty smart as a group, so if the only thing they can find to write about is Occupy, that is a strong sign that there’s actually no hope at present of radical change.
George Friedman says that the US undergoes intervals of unrest about every 60 years. The previous period of unrest IMO ended about 1973, the year when the US military completely withdrew from Vietnam. Remember that during the previous period of unrest, there was an organization (the Weather Underground) of at least 1000 members actively trying to overthrow the US government using riots and bombs.
During the period from 1973 to about 2013, which I claim was a period of stability, the professionals that run election campaigns learned that conservative Christians could be harnessed as a powerful voting bloc because they’re “well organized” (i.e., can be effectively led by church leaders) and of course the liberals reacted against that (successfully, IMO) in what is usually called the Culture Wars, but IIRC the Culture Wars never went beyond words and votes whereas the 2020 BLM protests had a few politically-motivated killings, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_and_Michael_Reinoehl