Review of Peter Turchin's “End Times”

I was nodding along until I got to this bit:

> The model fits well—almost too well—the current American reality. The median person is the “deplorable” (to quote Hillary Clinton), a populist (to quote the mainstream media), a Hillbilly (to quote J. D. Vance) or one of the candidates for the deaths of despair (to quote Anne Case and Angus Deaton).

The average American is surprisingly sane politically, going by opinion polls so I don't see any basis for suggesting the median person is a deplorable or populist (in the negative sense of being a dupe for powerful interests, not the positive sense of liking things that are popular and help a wide number of people).

https://www.citizen.org/news/progressive-policies-are-popula...

> Three-quarters of Americans say the tax system favors the rich and has too many loopholes. Three-quarters say that the wealthiest and large corporations should pay more in taxes. More than six in 10 Republicans agree. Sixty percent of Americans favor a wealth tax on those with more than $50 million in assets. (Consider: Only three-quarters of Americans correctly state that the earth revolves around the sun.)