A Country in Decline
It is time to admit a hard truth about America.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my habibis. This is the End of the Year Jackal,™ which I have had a lot of time to think about.
A lot of this will be a longer look at how America decided to roll the dice with Donald Trump again, and why it happened. But it is also a longer and deeper look at America.
There have been a million pieces written over the past month and a half about how and why Trump won, and I have read a lot of them.
Were voters unfamiliar with Kamala Harris? Yes.
Did the media fail to adequately cover Trump’s Campaign? Yes.
Did Joe Biden hurt Kamala’s chances by choosing to stay in the race for too long? Yes.
Was inflation the major, overarching factor in the election? Yes.
But even after reading a bunch of analyses of each of these points, I couldn’t help but return to a question that I asked shortly after the election: “How did Americans - who said high inflation was their number one issue - just vote for a guy whose policies will increase inflation?” When Trump left office last time, he left the country in tatters. Unemployment was at 6.4%, and we had not recovered the jobs lost from COVID, making Trump the first President since Herbert Hoover to leave office without creating a single job. How did Americans choose this guy again?
I have to ultimately come to terms with an unsettling answer: Maybe America has an ignorance problem.
A decadent America.
A meme has been floating around for a few years that is sort of a bizarro encapsulation of this post. You might have seen it before:
I will say off the bat that the meme is dumb. For one, it is ahistorical. Adolf Hitler was enlisted in the Bavarian Army in World War I, one of the most violent conflicts in world history, and saw incredible difficulty growing up (three of his siblings died very young). He faced hard times and did not grow into a strong man. For another, it’s not even true on a micro-level: Serial killers tend to come from homes where they suffered significant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.
On a macro-level, dictators similarly are not raised in country clubs. Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was grew up in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia during World War II, and those “hard times” led to him becoming the first sitting head of State to be charged with war crimes.
Finally, it is not even true when you apply it to the general populace. When the German people elected Hitler, Germany wasn’t some wealthy, well-off society. Rather, they were still suffering from heavy sanctions imposed by the rest of the Allied Powers after World War I. Compounding this was the Great Depression, which caused worldwide economic suffering and a subsequent turn to fascism in Europe and elsewhere. I think the meme sounds good in your head, but in reality it has been clear that hard times create even weaker men.
What is currently happening in America feels similar, but it is different. We are, by far, the richest country in the world. We are also the dominant empire in the world, and our reach extends both culturally and militarily. We are the most technologically advanced country in the world, and our economy - especially over the last four years - dwarfs even our closest competitors.
Americans have virtually everything at their fingertips: Even rural areas can get things shipped to them the next day and many places even get fancy organic food long-associated with wealthy cities. And we probably have too much good television, even if you choose just one of the 94 different streaming services.
Perhaps all of the above distracted the populace enough to give Trump a second term.
Nothing is perfect, of course. Inequality is a major issue (though it has been shrinking since 2021) and Americans do face more challenges than some of their Western peers. But overall, Americans do not know how good they have it. No place in the world is perfect and the “grass is greener” principle applies heavily when looking at the tempting shores of Spain or Italy (speaking to myself here).
We can even look to our own past as an example. Jimmy Carter recently passed away at the age of 100. If you are reading this, there is a 99% chance your parents were full-blown adults while he was President. Some of my readers may have been adults themselves while Carter was in the White House. His term was almost 50 years ago, and it was a major challenge for the United States.
Inflation was nearing double digits, we were falling behind the Soviet Union on the world stage, and the economy overall was stagnant. Life expectancy in the U.S. was about 73, a full four years less than it is today. Things used to be harder and everyday outcomes were worse for Americans than they are today.
Well, that is unless you live in Mississippi. Then things are mostly still the same.
Real American inequality.
I personally treat the year 2000 as a turning point in my life, mostly because it is a big, round number that is easy to remember. It was also the year I saw The Matrix for the first time, which was a big deal for me.
But it was also 25 years ago, a full quarter of a century. I sometimes feel like time has stood still since then, but in reality 25 years is a perfect little capsule of time to evaluate something. And when I do an objective analysis of the past 25 years, a thing that is hard to admit surfaces: Republicans have not been good for America.
Mississippi is the poorest state in our country and it has been dominated by Republican rule for two decades. In 2004, median income in Mississippi was around $34,000, and it is about $47,000 today. That sounds like an improvement, until you account for inflation. $34,000 in 2004 is worth about $57,000 today, which means that over the past 20 years, people living in Mississippi are actually making less than they were at the turn of the millennium.
It gets worse when you look at life expectancy in Mississippi, which is around 70 years old (on par with Azerbaijan) right now. In Colorado, where I live, it is 78 years old, which means that my kids will live nearly a decade longer than the average child born in Mississippi. You actually don’t have to look that far to figure out what life was like in Jimmy Carter’s America: It’s really just Mississippi right now.
This pattern holds throughout most Republican-led states. A look at the 2020 Election results can be startling when you sort them life expectancy:
It gets really sad when you look at the election results from 1960, where the pattern is almost reversed:
It is factual now that Democratic states are the economic powerhouses of the country, and that most Republican states take more from the Federal government than they produce. It is something that was genuinely unthinkable in 1992, and it is sad. It is extra sad because I think, overall, the GOP has a great history. They were obviously founded based on their opposition to slavery, and throughout the 20th Century, sounded the alarm about the dangers of Soviet Russia much louder than the Democrats. Today, California is a Democratic stronghold, but Napa Valley - associated now with the “bluest” of blue-state living - got its start under Ronald Reagan! There was definitely a time when Republicans governed better and produced better outcomes for their constituents. But that time is long gone.1
So, what happened?
This is where my definition of American ignorance comes in. Based on every piece of data available, you and your children are better off choosing to live in a state run by Democrats than a state run by Republicans. If you choose the latter, your children will likely end up poorer than mine, unhealthier than mine, and die earlier than mine. It is a sad, crushing reality, and it will now be reflected on a national level.
As I said above, there were a lot of factors behind Trump’s win. But there is one that I have been truly unable to get out of my head:
Some of country’s most vulnerable people voted for Trump based on the belief that he would come through for them, despite (1) his first term and (2) the people associated with his Campaign. This is a trend that has been happening in GOP states for the better part of the last three decades, and it is now going national.
New Castle, Pennsylvania is small town where more than 25% of the population lives below the poverty line. For the first time in years, the town voted for a Republican President. Interviews with the town’s residents tug at your heartstrings:
Some longtime Democrats like Mosura said they initially struggled over whether to vote for Trump. They had believed Democrats were the most likely to help the poor and disagreed with Republicans on issues like abortion. But Mosura said she kept coming back to the conclusion that Trump would put Americans like her first and improve her economic prospects.
Mosura said she has been unable to find full-time work in her field and is planning to change her party affiliation to Republican. But she also gets anxious when she hears GOP politicians talk about reducing government spending.
“We helped get you in office; please take care of us,” Mosura said,shifting the conversation as though she were speaking to Trump. “Please don’t cut the things that help the most vulnerable.”
In a normal, healthy society, with a well-informed populace, a person like Mosura would be able to look around and see the evidence that people like her are poised to do better under a Democrat. But we’re not really there.
Instead, we’re here: Where Republicans in Congress are already talking about cutting Social Security (along with Medicare and Medicaid), and proposed members of Trump’s own Cabinet have signaled the cuts may have to come from somewhere. This has happened in red states over the past few years, who have leaders that speak the cultural language of their constituents but routinely govern in ways that negatively affect them.
In an ideal world, we’d have a media environment where Mosura (and people in Mississippi) could turn to an outlet she/they trusted and have Trump’s true plans explained. Or (and this is maybe a little mean), she could have paid attention to what Trump did during his first term, when his budget proposals cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. There are some Democrats who are calling for people like Mosura to get what they voted for, good and hard. Maybe we do need some pain, but I think that misses the predicament we are in.
The myth of always being right.
A big story popped up over the past few weeks that is a useful prism here. For years, the GOP has said that the real perpetrators behind January 6th weren’t Trump supporters, but members of the FBI. They instigated the crowd, pushed people towards the Capitol, and used it as a setup to make Trump look bad.
Conservative media even pointed to one particular guy, Ray Epps, and insinuated he was an undercover agent trying to rile people up. A recent report on January 6th debunked that entire narrative. There were no undercover FBI agents at the Capitol that day, and the FBI had no role in January 6th. Every person living in reality has known this for a while.
How did MAGA react? They declared victory anyway, with J.D. Vance saying that the GOP had been right all along. Never mind the fact that Ray Epps is currently living in hiding (although he has sued Fox News and will likely see a huge payout) and that FBI agents have been the targets of violence from Trump supporters. All that matters is that MAGA can say they were right.
Their media repeated that they were right over and over again, to the point where even a basketball pundit picked up on it and torched Democrats. If we are at the point where a normal media figure can get duped by right-wing media, then what hope does anyone else have? It is a microcosm of how poor voters that would benefit from a Medicaid expansion in places like Kentucky and West Virginia continually vote for people who refuse to give them access to healthcare.
The reality is that Americans no longer have the time to be better informed, or at least they don’t feel like they do. We are reading fewer books than ever before, and are using social media more than we sleep. Is it any surprise that during an election when people were Googling if Joe Biden dropped out a week before they voted, that they turned to the celebrity, former President who promised he’d lower inflation? In hindsight, it isn’t.
There is real, actual data to look at that shows Democrats are currently better at governing than Republicans, but the GOP has enjoyed a media environment that protects them from criticism.
The future is dim, but there is hope.
Trump winning a second term despite being a horrible ex-president responsible for the first failed peaceful transition of power in American history is an indictment on the electorate. There is no getting around that, and I don’t know how to put it in kinder terms. But the election was actually very close, with Trump’s margin of victory down to only 1.43%. Despite him casting it as a resounding victory, it was (again) one of the closest elections in modern American history. That is a silver lining, but I still cannot put myself into the brain of a Trump voter from New Castle, Pennsylvania.
I know lots of conservative people who would prefer GOP policies (and there are obviously places I agree with them!) that declined to vote for Trump for principled reasons. That is so commendable. But it is wild to me that they chose not to cast their vote for him, when there were people out there who prefer Democratic policies that voted for Trump believing he would not do the things he campaigned on.
Maybe those people will turn on him once his promises collapse and he fails as a president again (and he will fail). This will put Democrats in a place to win in 2026 and then, when the celebrity allure of Trump fades and Donald Trump, Jr., proves to be a mediocre candidate, they will take back the White House in 2028.
But even then, I worry that we are headed towards a cliff. It is easy to see a future where Democrats similarly convince a portion of the public that their wild promises (like a cap on grocery prices, for instance) will benefit regular people, only to have reality come and bite those voters in the face. And then those voters are deceived by an ascendant left-wing media apparatus that tells them everything is actually fine. I am diagnosing a right-wing media problem right now, but it will not always be that way.
There is a place that we need to get to where Americans are ready to stomach the hard answers to tough questions. Maybe - if we care about our debt - we need to have those responsible conversations about cuts to our benefits programs? Maybe we should also ask questions about a conservative media apparatus that gets its funding from shadowy entities overseas? Maybe we could subject our leaders to Question Time as an experiment?
I just can’t see any of it happening right now. In fact, I think things are going to get worse, and that’s before you consider the pain brought on by another Trump presidency and his team pulling a Weekend at Bernie’s to get him into the White House. I have always felt this and have tried to say it often, but I think Trump is a symptom of a deeper problem within America rather than a problem himself.
Maybe, when he eventually fades from American politics, the voters he attracted with his celebrity will go back to where they were before, which was mostly on the sidelines of politics. Or maybe they will go to someone else, like another celebrity candidate (this time on the Left!).
But if we are too distracted by social media, reality TV, or other indulgences (which are all great in moderation!), then politics will fall into the hands of corrupt people with no morals. That is about to kick into overdrive in the next Administration, but it will be an ongoing problem we need to face. And what comes after that will be even worse. I have a feeling we are in for some hard times, and those hard times will produce weak men.
Happy New Year!
See you for the inauguration.
Modern-day Democrats also like the pretend that the Parties simply flipped after the Civil Rights Act (i.e., nasty, slave-owning Democrats simply became Republicans), but in reality the Parties swapped places on a bunch of issues, to the point where neither Party really reflects where they were in 1960 (or in 2000, or in 1865). Time has marched on and it should feel safe to say it: This is not your grandfather’s Republican Party.