Every story has an ending. Whether men or nations, all things end. As with Rome, all nations eventually decline and die. And, someday, our beloved United States will wither and fall. It may be next year or it may be in a hundred years, but it will happen.
The question is, are we seeing it happen now?
Myra Adams, who served on the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain, is not sanguine about our prospects. In an op-ed article published Friday at The Hill, she presents us with five reasons America may be in an irreversible decline; let's have a look at those five reasons.
1.Uncontrollable U.S. Debt: The U.S. Debt Clock displays the inevitability of American decline — a “ticking time bomb” of data and financial evidence — especially the following three.
The U.S. government’s total unfunded liabilities — the combined amount of payments promised without funds to recipients of Social Security, Medicare, federal employee pensions, veterans’ benefits and federal debt held by the public — stand at $212 trillion, and are rapidly increasing. For context, that number was just $122 trillion as recently as 2019 and is projected by the Debt Clock to reach $288.9 trillion by 2028.
This is the elephant in the room that neither party is particularly anxious to talk about. But if anything brings America down, it's this; imagine the impact an American default would have on the global economy. No nation will survive unscathed; the United States is the world's largest marketplace, and the primary global counterweight to the United States - China - is dependent on sales of Chinese goods to Americans. This debt is no longer something we can grow our way out of. We can inflate our way out of it, and that seems to be the tack the Biden Administration was pursuing, whether through intent or incompetence; but that administration has utterly lost the confidence of most Americans, and they are, candidly, on their way out. No matter what the GOP does, it's hard to believe the Democrats will stick with "'Weekend at Bernie's' Joe" as their candidate.
The other avenue out is the default -- repudiation of our national debt. And that is a recipe for global economic calamity, and very likely a global war as desperate nations grab for resources. Here's Adams' second point.
2. Low student achievement: If our nation is to dig itself out of that harrowing debt trap, it will need successive generations of superstar students, armed with skills and creativity. Someday, they will invent and harness technologies to manufacture state-of-the-art products and related services, fueling an economic boom that boosts the GDP.
It's not just low student achievement, although that's a huge issue. Our education systems have utterly failed, and worse, too many of our nation's youths have been absorbed into a toxic, brutal, misogynistic "thug" culture that demeans education and praises random violence. The perpetrators often face little or no consequence for their acts,
Our government-run education system is in free fall, and our justice systems are broken. Next, she talks about wealth.
3. Increasing income and wealth inequality: Sub-par educational achievement will probably only increase the gap between the rich and poor. Moreover, it will shrink the once-vibrant middle class — the pride of post-war America.
Wealth inequality in and of itself is nothing. It is the polarization of wealth by the gradual destruction of the middle class, that is concerning. The middle class is a fairly recent innovation, arising out of the Industrial Revolution; before that, wealth was the province of a few elites, while the vast majority lived in grinding poverty. While the United States has little or no abject poverty, we have relative poverty, which breeds envy.
This is a self-perpetuating cycle. Politicians play on envy to campaign as Santa Claus, promising the voters more and more free stuff, which requires punitive taxes on the productive, or borrowing or printing money, and all of those are drags on the economy; This diminishes the middle class, which breeds envy, which perpetuates the problem. And you can't convince me many pols don't know this; they just don't care. The next point is on patriotism and the American culture.
4. Loss of American identity and patriotism: The once-great American “melting pot” is an outdated concept for many Americans. Traditionally, immigrants with different languages and cultures assimilated and became distinctly American. The current trend is toward a heterogeneous culture.
Teddy Roosevelt warned us against the danger of hyphenated Americans. He was correct; to survive, a nation needs to have a high-trust culture. Social harmony arises from shared values.
And shared values come from homogeneity. I don't mean homogeneity of skin color, or ethnic background, but homogeneity of ideals. A nation - a people - cannot survive without this. And America was intended to be a nation, not of ethnicities, but of ideals, and we are losing those ideals. Next, she talks about the state of our political system.
5. Widespread belief that our political system is broken: Americans’ disdain for the political system has been captured in numerous polls, showing voters are dissatisfied with a potential Biden-Trump rematch — “a uniquely horrible choice,” as the headline quote from one voter put it.
This may be the worst one, and the one that may lead to collapse. Our political system, while still technically a republic, has declined into a combination of oligarchy and kakistocracy.
The federal government in particular seems, to paraphrase Lyndon Johnson, unable to fart and chew gum at the same time. The budget process has devolved into a never-ending stream of continuing resolutions. Our tax code makes "War and Peace" look like a kid's comic book. Our military, which once strode the earth like a Colossus, has been rendered impotent by politicians who see it as a great, social experimentation laboratory. Congress has become one of the largest assemblages of grifters, con men, bunkum artists, mendicants, and nincompoops ever to walk the halls of government.
But things aren't hopeless yet. It's common -- I've used it a lot myself -- to point out this old cycle:
- Hard times make tough people.
- Tough people make good times.
- Good times make weak people.
- Weak people make hard times. <-- You are here.
Hard times we may be in, but with any luck at all, we're making tougher people.
Here’s where I’m skeptical. Sure, bad times are coming, and yes, if there is any sanity left in the country, the Democrats and, particularly, the Biden Administration, will be held to blame for it. But the rock upon which I founder in this assessment is the statement “…if there is any sanity left in the country.” Some days, I have a hard time convincing myself that the electorate in general is much smarter than a sheep.
But I might be wrong. I hope I am, and here's why I might be wrong. There’s a story about a young man buying a mule from an old man, who assured the buyer that the mule was “…the most biddable creature ever birthed. Just tell him what you want him to do and he’ll do it.” So the young man pays for the mule, takes hold of the headstall, and says, “OK, come with me.” The mule doesn’t budge. “Come on,” the buyer says, pulling harder. “You’re coming with me.” The mule ignores him. Then the old man says, “Oh, wait.” He picks up a nearby two-by-four and shatters it across the mule’s skull. The mule looks up and starts to follow the buyer. The old man calls after them as they leave, “He’ll do anything you want, but first you have to get his attention.”
The coming few years may be enough to get the American people’s attention. And it may take that metaphorical two-by-four.