"The Decade That Forced American Politicians and Commentators to Confront the Limits of the Country's Own Mythology"

"Political elites in both parties had long shared the same conventional wisdom about the United States, grounded in ideas of exceptionalism and institutional perfection. But with the rise of Donald Trump and the return of a virulent politics of xenophobia and exclusion, it became increasingly difficult, even for many in the political establishment, to reproduce these past homilies. Today the US is truly at a crossroads. Are Americans willing to confront the failures that led to the present, or will the US remain trapped in the same cycles of crisis and popular disaffection?"

Aziz Rana at The Guardian looks the politics of the 2010s.

As does Annie Lowrey at The Atlantic, regarding the economy.

And Politico asks historians to write a paragraph about the decade for a future textbook.