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In the cultural orbit of America, there has been a cataclysm once every lifetime, almost like clockwork

Compelling as the imagery was, Robson gave the game away by using the pronoun “we,” because of course sanctimonious indignation is not an invention of the young. People have been wondering how people dare forever. The English comedian Catherine Tate, for example, does a sketch character called Derek who is an older single man who lives with his mother and has a speaking manner that is gayer than Christmas. So when young people assume he is gay and treat him respectfully as such, his tagline, “How very dare you!” is a caricature of a self-deluded Boomer whose crusty, outdated sense of place in the world has been challenged by a new morality of kindness and acceptance.

One thing you notice in these books about generational contrast is the frequency of insanity metaphors. There is plenty of religious and cultish language. Occasionally military images are called up for service. But it is the claims of insanity that stand out.

“How did our societies become so insane?” lamented Eric Kaufmann, author of Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities in his Financial Times review of Murray’s book.

Kaufmann is a Canadian Gen Xer in his late 40s, but that is a question that would sound perfectly normal coming from the average Gen Z teenager of today, as he looks around at climate change, Brexit, Trumpism, and all the rest, and wonders how it got this way and what in hell the future might look like.

This sort of generational astrology has lately caught on, in part because it seems to be working better than ever. Traditional astrology has been packaged into memes and gifs as a Millennial trend of breezy self-care, so it is already current in popular culture. Intellectuals are at it too, both young and old, traditionalist and revolutionary. The theory of the Fourth Turning, a cyclical and quasi-mystical view of generation history that suggests we are now in the boundary years between the collapse of an old order and the rise of a new one, has taken on a sulphurous whiff of the dark arts through its endorsement by Steve Bannon, former Trump chief of staff and alt-right thought leader who is now rallying nationalist political groups in Europe.