While the established pundits struggled to make sense of the world, a new cohort of activists and writers emerged with a scavenged explanation: class conflict. The reason no one could figure out if America was in crisis or out of one is because its effects were uneven, and by design. This was heresy in a twenty-first-century America, where socialism had been disproven. We were taught to locate ourselves near the end of history's long arc toward justice, a "You are here" dot sliding along the asymptote between the way things are and the best we could hope for them to be. And yet, stuff kept happening.