Why You Need to Look Beyond America’s History to Understand What’s Coming Next

To navigate what’s ahead, Americans need more than history — they need a global lens and a new playbook.

This post launches ‘🦅Vantage Point’ — a new publication under the Your Time Starts Now banner, created to help readers understand what’s happening in the US by looking beyond it.

Dear friends,

During the week prior to the last Hands OFF! protest, as I engaged with the wider Substack community it became evident that many Substackers assume that the US is the only democratic nation facing a contraction in civic freedom.

I'm not surprised by this. We all tend to be quite 'own-nation-centric' in our worldview, and perhaps never more so than in America. Because while there's no shortage of curious, intelligent, or globally minded individuals, the structure of American media, education— and even, the sheer scale of the US's geography— can feed a kind of national ‘tunnel vision’.

Globally, both traditional and social media also reinforce a cultural narrative of American ‘exceptionalism’—the idea that the US is unique or superior in its values and systems. That belief can also subtly (or over…