The American People Are Descending into Despair
Over and over again, the U.S. federal government, dominated by progressive Democrats, has been creating disasters for the American people. Moreover, in causing those calamities, progressives have been destroying the foundations of trust necessary to bind us together as a people. Rather than presenting the United States as the matured fruit of the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, they envision us as an empire of evil dominated by systemic racism. Being told repeatedly how very evil they are, and buffeted by persistent blows to our economy, education systems, and individual liberties, the American people are descending into a state of despair. The despair is deepened by the fact its causes do not seem to be abating. The Brookings Institution has concluded
Despair in our society is a barrier to reviving our labor markets and productivity, jeopardizes our well-being, health, and longevity, and affects our politics. Despair was increasing among Americans well before COVID-19; the virus was an exponential shock. … This brief argues that the Biden administration ought to form a new federal interagency task force to address addiction and despair as a critical first step.
America’s crisis of despair: A federal task force for economic recovery and societal well-being
Brookings Institution / Carol Graham
However, adding more federal government interference governing society is a recipe for even more despair.
How Do We Know the American People Are Sinking Into Despair?
This section is probably unnecessary for most people. Economic problems are making life more difficult for most in the middle class and everyone below it. The loss of U.S. control over our borders allows not just a huge influx of illegal immigrants, but a smuggling of enormous amounts of drugs such as fentanyl, which result in increasing deaths, particularly among our young. Reasons for despair (see below) abound. However, having asserted this despair exists and is growing, the assertions must be demonstrated as true.
The Reasons for Despair
For more than a century, Americans have been sold the myth by progressives they are not capable of governing themselves. Instead, starting with the administration of Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), we have been told we need the wisdom and knowledge of technocrats to govern our lives. Over the century of time that has passed since, the U.S. Congress has ceded increasing amounts of power to the executive branch and to semi-autonomous independent agencies. These semi-autonomous agencies include the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and many, many more. Just from the names of these agencies, you can get a feel for how much unchecked power they have to regulate our lives without our consent.
Over the decades, technocratic regulators discovered how the power they were granted was insufficient to solve or ameliorate most social problems. Their response was to amass ever more power. Under the Biden Administration, the technocratic and political elites even decided they needed to determine for us what was true and what was not. Such matters were deemed too complicated for the ordinary American citizen. The Left-wing journalist, Matt Taibbi, in publishing internal Twitter documents released by Elon Musk, has revealed a progressive political elite at war with the truth. Not only are they arrogating for themselves the power to dictate to us what is true, progressive elites are promoting lies as truth. I have written about the attempts of progressive Democrats to gaslight the American people in the post Progressive Democrats Are Gaslighting the American People. I have written about methods for filtering truth from the fables they tell us in the post How To Filter The Truth From Progressive Gaslighting.
Presented with elites attempting to take away our personal freedoms, can the American people have any better reason to fall into despair?
In addition, there are all the causes of public despair created by Biden Administration policies. Among their worst policies is the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which will actually create even more inflation in the end. Then, there is their war on the supply side of the economy. Democrats tend to react to all economic troubles by increasing economic demand through government projects and purchases. They believe increasing government demand would motivate the production of goods and services broadly needed by everyone in the country.
However, what is really needed is to balance economic demand for goods and services with their supply through increased (or diminished) demand. To merely increase government demand without increasing supply of those things demanded by all consumers would merely increase inflation. The problem is the goods and services demanded by government are most often different from those demanded by everyone else. Such government policies that increase government economic demand meet the standard requirement for increasing inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods.
The Biden Administration’s economic policies scream out that they much prefer an economy dominated by crony capitalism, rather than free-market capitalism. They seem bound and determined to violate every classical law of economics. Their misunderstanding of what is needed for an optimally running economy is so complete, I have suggested they need to take an introductory course in economics.
Yet, the Biden Administration’s campaign against individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution and their mismanagement of the economy are not the only reasons for the public’s fall into despair. When the public perceives failures in public policies created by a ruling party, the usual remedy is to remove that party from power in the next general elections. This is what many expected in the 2022 midterm elections. However, instead of a rebuke from the electorate, the midterms defied reality and only resulted in a small diminution of Democratic Party power. When elections fail to throw the bums out, what can Republicans and like-minded Independents react other than with immense despair.
In January 2023, the Gallup organization published a poll of the American people on how they view American prospects in 2023. The result was majorities of respondents predicted “negative conditions in 12 of 13 economic political, societal and international arenas.”
When offered opposing outcomes on each issue, about eight in 10 U.S. adults think 2023 will be a year of economic difficulty with higher rather than lower taxes and a growing rather than shrinking budget deficit. More than six in 10 think prices will rise at a high rate and the stock market will fall in the year ahead, both of which happened in 2022. In addition, just over half of Americans predict that unemployment will increase in 2023, an economic problem the U.S. was spared in 2022.
On the domestic front, 90% of Americans expect 2023 will be a year of political conflict in the U.S., 72% think the crime rate will rise, and 56% predict there will be many strikes by labor unions.
Americans Largely Pessimistic About U.S. Prospects in 2023
The Gallup Organization
Even Young Progressives Despair
From the comments above, we would expect mostly Republicans and many independents to be descending into despair. However, they are not the only ones. Surprisingly, even young Americans, who predominantly support the Democratic Party, are feeling despair. The assertion of their predominantly Democratic Party support is shown in the bar chart below. The chart, derived from data provided by the Pew Research Center, shows how Americans from various age groups voted for Congress in the 2022 midterm elections. The chart was constructed by the Brookings Institution.
The two youngest American generations are the Plurals (Gen Z) and Millennials.The oldest generations, which are also the smallest in number, are the Silent/GI generations, encompassing ages 76 through everyone older.
Another national poll released in April 2023 by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School showed that President Biden’s approval rating by young voters (18-to-29-years-old) had fallen to 36% from a high at the beginning of Biden’s administration of 59%. The plot below shows how the presidential approval rating from young Americans evolved from Barack Obama to the present day under Joe Biden.
Clearly, comparing youth presidential approvals of Donald Trump versus those of Barack Obama and the beginning of Joe Biden’s Administration, we must conclude young Americans prefer progressive policies over those of “conservatives” (i.e. neoliberals).Yet, the data also shows their optimism in the Biden Administration’s progressive policies is rapidly falling. This might be due to their perception of Biden’s inability to persuade everyone of the effectiveness and rightness of his progressive policies. However, they cannot be completely insensible to the catastrophic results of those policies.
Is There a Way Out?
In normal times, the way to end our despair would be obvious: We would vote the bums out. Yet, the fizzling of the much expected red tsunami in the 2022 midterm elections into a tiny ripple must give us doubts about this possibility. Perhaps additional painful experience in the results of progressive policies will persuade enough voters to reject the Democrats and their destructive programs.
However, we should beware the development of one dangerous consequence. Should Democrats remain in power after the 2024 elections, continuing despair caused by their policies could create hatred in the despairing. What would follow then could not possibly be good.
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