Nothing happens “all of a sudden.”
Behind every all-of-a-sudden sea change are years of frustrations, angers, and resentments. Years of feeling like the system is screwing you and everyone like you. And then, with nothing else to lose, you return the favor and screw the system.
The Revolution Nobody Saw Coming
Such was the case on Aug. 7, 1980. The Lenin Shipyard.
Gdańsk, Poland.
Five months from retirement and the system screwed 51-year-old Anna Walentynowicz, a crane operator. Her offense: The government claimed she was organizing a union without approval.
Bad timing.
Not for Anna.
For the Polish government.
A month earlier, Warsaw had raised food prices while holding down wages, and Polish workers were already seething. A week after Anna lost her job, her coworkers walked out and demanded she be reinstated. The strike spread across the country. By month’s end, the government had signed a deal with the strikers.
And the union born in that shipyard—what came to be known globally as “Solidarity”—ultimately led to the downfall of Communism in Poland.
All because years of frustrations, angers, and resentments exploded all of a sudden.
That’s the thing about revolutions: Regimes rarely see them coming. People hide their anger right up until the moment they see everyone else showing theirs.
Then… the system comes crashing down.
What Does a Movie-Theater Worker Have to Do With a Revolution?
Which brings me to Chima Nwokolo, a name you likely won’t know.
Politico profiled him this month in a piece about young Americans and debt.
He’s 24, with a political science degree from San Jose State. But in the version of America we have today, he can’t land a full-time job in his chosen career. So Chima works part-time at a movie theater.
Chima followed the path the system told him to follow: work hard, get a solid education, and the American Dream is yours.
Only, the system no longer works for younger generations.
They’re stuck in the Bizarro World version of the American Dream: Work hard, land a part-time job slinging lattes and popcorn, and watch the bills pile up as you survive from one month to the next on the good graces of Mastercard and Visa.
Even after adjusting for inflation, gen Z carries bigger credit card balances and falls behind on payments more often than millennials did at the same age. This isn’t avocado toast. It’s gas and rent going on plastic because the paycheck ran out first.
Gen Z isn’t splurging so much as surviving. As one 24-year-old in Raleigh put it to Politico: “I can not eat, or I can have credit card debt.”
This is the root of the next American revolution.
More than 40% of Americans are gen Zs or their older siblings, the millennials. They are the two largest generations in America today, and just like the baby boomers changed politics in America, so too will the Zs and millennials.
Frustration, anger, and resentment at a broken system will do that.
These facts are one of the reasons behind my thesis that America faces a crisis that changes the look of the country and the economy. I’ve long predicted that it arrives in 2027-28. Whether it arrives as soon as that or not—it’s coming.
People will only live for so long under never-ending financial pressure. Then the moment no one saw coming arrives.
Washington Should Be Watching the Warning Signs
Harvard’s spring youth poll found that just 15% of young Americans trust Washington to do the right thing most of the time, the lowest in the poll’s 26-year history. Half say people like them have no say in what government does.
But they will have a say at some point.
Last year in Nepal, young protesters organizing on TikTok and Discord brought down the government in about 48 hours, then helped choose the interim prime minister through a Discord poll.
And 37 years ago, in November 1989, a party spokesman in East Germany botched an announcement on live TV, and crowds of East Germans fed up with the system massed at the Berlin Wall and forced the gates open in a single night. Within a year, East Germany was gone. A year after that, so was the Soviet Union.
Anna Walentynowicz ran a crane. Chima Nwokolo works at a movie theater. Neither set out to bring down anything. She just wanted her job back. He just wants a real job, like the American system promised.
The revolution is coming, and it will probably arrive with a side of popcorn… all of a sudden.
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