I’m spending the month in Budapest, Hungary, and I had a conversation with a Dutch sociologist, Eric Hendricks, who suggested that, since the French Revolution, the West has been trapped in a cycle of fervor, terror, and disillusionment—or what he calls the “modernity loop.” In his theory, Western societies, including the United States, have relentlessly pursued equality, only to be disappointed when those movements collapse into violence. Is the woke revolution, which peaked after the death of George Floyd, part of this pattern? And can Western societies escape the loop?