{"id":233694,"date":"2024-10-07T14:27:24","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T19:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/?p=233694"},"modified":"2024-10-07T15:37:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T20:37:38","slug":"american-crisis-unfolding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/blog\/american-crisis-unfolding\/","title":{"rendered":"American Crisis Unfolding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Along with just about everyone else, this humble spirit fears that he\u2019s spent too much time writing about Donald Trump.  Unfortunately, the man provides an almost bottomless pit of material, and he\u2019s getting worse as the election approaches.  No one looks forward to the country \u201cgetting past\u201d Trump more than I do, but until then. . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, \u201cthe challenges America faces aren\u2019t really logistical, they are metaphysical\u201d and as a result \u201cthe economic metrics used by economists and presidents to capture the state of the nation are masking a vast \u2018spiritual crises.\u2019\u201d His ideas were summarized in the New York times: \u201cThe Senator Warning Democrats of a Crisis Unfolding Beneath Their Noses.\u201d<\/a> The senator defines his mission as \u201cunderstanding how the version of liberalism we\u2019ve adopted\u2014defined by its emphasis on free markets, globalization and free choice\u2014has begun to feel to many like a dead end, and to therefore come up with a new vision for the Democratic Party.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem, as he sees it, is that America\u2019s leaders have long been guided by what\u2019s often called the neoliberal consensus: the notion that \u201cbarrier-free international markets, rapidly advancing communications technology and automation, decreased regulation, and empowered citizen-consumers would be the keys to prosperity, happiness and strong democracy\u201d In other words, the assumption that what\u2019s good for markets is good for society\u2014and what makes us prosperous, will also make us happy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

Too Many Americans Feel the World is Just Getting Worse<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
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Needless to say, the old adage that \u201cwhat\u2019s good for General Motors is good for America\u201d no longer holds true.  And it\u2019s more than just losing the industrial powerhouses that once employed huge swaths of Americans, enabling them to live middleclass lives.  Does anyone seriously believe that what\u2019s good for companies like Mehta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Nvidia (chips for AI), Tesla (Elon Musk), Apple (exploited Chinese labor), and Amazon (having to return what the Chinese make) are good for American society as a whole?  Their profits keep going up, as do their market valuations, but their stock is owned by a relatively small portion of Americans.  And even if their success could be shared equitably throughout society, there\u2019s reason to think Americans are looking for something better, something more than simply material gain.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe idea that modern life is a story of constant economic and technological progress steadily making the world a better place has stopped lining up with how Americans feel. You can look at statistics about suicide, depression, overdoses and declining life expectancy. . . and the astonishingly pervasive sense of loneliness that now seems to color so many American lives. But no statistics really capture the feeling, shared by growing numbers of Americans, that the world is just getting worse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s not just the cost of living and the lack of opportunity to improve their lives (a house would be nice) that\u2019s angered people and prevented the Democrats\u2019 message from getting through.  The truth is, it\u2019s hard for most people to assess the state of the economy.  Unless there are circumstances such as occurred during the Great Recession or the Covid pandemic, asking people about the \u201ceconomy\u201d usually garners nothing more than how they feel about their own circumstances and prospects at the moment\u2014which have lately been tainted by the grim notion that the world is getting worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor over a year, the Biden administration and its allies had been promoting data showing an economic miracle, as friendly pundits described it \u2014 a record-setting stock market, low unemployment, and G.D.P. growth outpacing that of almost every other Western nation. But very few voters believed the story those metrics were telling. In poll after poll, they expressed a bleak view of the economy \u2014 to the frustration of both Democrats and many economists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We may not yet have discovered how to counteract it, but the fact is, \u201cDonald Trump and the MAGA movement have tapped into a sense of deep alienation and national malaise, feelings that Democrats often have trouble even acknowledging are real.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Along with just about everyone else, this humble spirit fears that he\u2019s spent too much time writing about Donald Trump.  Unfortunately, the man provides an almost bottomless pit of material, and he\u2019s getting worse as the election approaches.  No one looks forward to the country \u201cgetting past\u201d Trump more than I do, but until then. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":233697,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233694"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233709,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233694\/revisions\/233709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}