Presentation covers 250 years of the United States transforming itself

Retired Libby High School teacher Jim May will explore the United States’ 250-year history and show how America overhauls itself every half century during a talk on Aug. 17. 

May describes this “50-Year Pulse” at this month’s meeting of Northwest Montana Westerners, a local history group. The event is 7 p.m. at the Northwest Montana History Museum. General admission is $5, with members and youths admitted free.

America does not evolve in a straight line, he notes. Instead, it undergoes a massive socio-economic transformation roughly every 50 years. And the final decade of each cycle is marked by institutional decay, political polarization, economic instability, and intense social unrest.

The cycle started in 1826 when the United States had just been through the War of 1812, and had launched into Western expansion. It was very much a time of experiment for the new nation, he states.

When the centennial came in 1876, the nation had been split by a deadly Civil War and was entering an industrial revolution that would bring a different set of economic troubles. 1926 was in the aftermath of another war and a looming depression. The 1976 bicentennial was marked by the end of the Vietnam War and the first resignation of a U.S. president.

The structural chaos we see today is not evidence of America’s permanent decline, May points out. Rather, it is the country's unique historical mechanism of forced rebirth and reinvention. As the old 50-year cycle concludes, he believes the nation will fundamentally be remade to face the challenges of the future.

May spent 36 years educating students about history and social studies. He has taught Advanced Placement courses on government and politics, and is a board member of the Kootenai Heritage Council.