When Donald Trump stood up and raised his fist in the air, the moment immediately passed into legend.

The attempt on the life of President Trump on Saturday, July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania crystalized a campaign and a year which, although far from finished, are sure to go down as among the most turbulent and pivotal in American history.

Whatever one feels about the man at the center of the event, there’s no doubt that his brush with death had a visceral effect on the American psyche. One feels that we are at a crisis point in the history of the nation, in which the future is uncertain and radically different outcomes can turn on the smallest of events.

It’s worth pointing out, however, that America has been at similar crossroads in the past. We have faced many moments of crisis in which the fate of our nation hung on the language in a single document, on the outcome of a single battle, on the results of a single election, or on the willingness of the citizenry to mobilize against an enemy. Moreover, we have had whole eras of national crisis during which many such moments have presented themselves.

The spacing of these crisis eras, which occur roughly a lifetime apart, seems more than coincidental: It appears to reflect an enduring tendency of human nature. This is in keeping with the “generation theory” of history espoused by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe. During these great crises, distinct leader personas emerge from the elder generation.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about this sort of elder persona in his 1835 short story collection, Twice-Told Tales. Referring to the 1689 uprising by the residents of Boston against the colonial governor of New England, Hawthorne described the moment when an old man appeared in the street to stop the advance of British troops through the city:

Suddenly, there was seen the figure of an ancient man, who seemed to have emerged from among the people … At the old man’s word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint … could only belong to some old champion of the righteous cause … But whether the oppressor were overawed by the Gray Champion’s look, or perceived his peril in the threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back …

Although the old man who stopped the British advance was never identified, Hawthorne makes two additions observations about this “Gray Champion” that give him a resonance beyond that singular moment in 1689. First, the unidentified man’s age revealed him to be one of the original Puritans who had settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded Boston in the 1620s and ’30s. Second, accounts of Boston during the Revolution in 1775 spoke of elders who, in dress, demeanor, and impact, bore a striking resemblance to that unidentified man.

“I have heard,” Hawthorne wrote, “that, whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again.” The Gray Champion, in other words, is no isolated historical phenomenon; he (or she) is an archetype, who reveals himself when the sense of civic peril is imminent or already raging.

What forms the basis for this archetype, who becomes the Gray Champion in old age? According to Strauss and Howe, the Gray Champions emerge from a certain kind of generation. Principled, resolute, wise, and uncompromising, the “prophet” generation has defined elderhood during every great crisis in American history, and it has produced some of America’s most consequential and memorable leaders.

At the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said to his fellow signees, who were mostly from the younger generations, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” At the dedication of Gettysburg National Cemetery in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln told the crowd, “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” Addressing Congress after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared, “The American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.” Each of these men, who were elder statesmen during great crises, were from a prophet generation. Prophet generations are born just after a prior great crisis and enter old age as a new crisis ensues.

Today, America’s prophet generation  is the Baby Boomer generation, born just after World War II and in old age just as modern America seems be unravelling at the seams.

One of the most striking aspects of our current crisis is that there are few Boomer leaders who seem to be a good fit for the title of Gray Champion. His obvious decline and lame-duck status notwithstanding, President Biden is a member of the Silent Generation; he is too old to be a prophet archetype, and too indecisive to be a Gray Champion. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is a Boomer, has been tagged with Hawthorne’s label in some corners. But the events of July 13 have settled the question. President Trump is this era’s Gray Champion.

If Strauss and Howe’s rendition of American history marked by recurring crises and generational archetypes is mostly accurate—and I believe it is—then the Boomers are going to play the crucial role in determining how this crisis turns out for our country. At stake is almost certainly whether or not America will continue as a constitutional republic. History shows that in a crisis such as this, no outcome, whether good or bad, is guaranteed. But when President Trump raised his fist in the air after being shot and implored his supporters to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” he fulfilled a prophecy given by Hawthorne (himself a prophet archetype) nearly two centuries ago:

His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader’s step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come …