Forget Red vs. Blue. The real battle is between the Engineer and the Middleman. From the $16 prescriptions of “TrumpRx” to the “American Stack” defending digital liberty, we are witnessing the physics of efficiency colliding with the inertia of politics.
By Michael Peabody
History rarely moves in a straight line. It moves in cycles. The historians Strauss and Howe identify the current era as a “Fourth Turning.” This is a winter of civic decay where institutions calcify and the accumulated debts of the past come due. To the casual observer in January 2026, the turbulence of the last year appears to be mere chaos. To the economist, however, it is something far more functional. It is a liquidation of failed assets.
The most toxic asset on the books is the twentieth-century bureaucratic state.
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