I read a large part of “Fourth Turning” (which I discussed in yesterday’s post) in the St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands airport on Monday afternoon, while waiting for a flight home. All around me were TV sets showing President Obama speaking to a crowd in Elkhart, Indiana, intruding on my consciousness. I tuned them out with an iPod and the book. That same evening Obama spoke again, and I read his words the next morning, reflecting all the while on how exactly his talk of crisis and catastrophe fit into the book’s projections. And now, three days later, as...