American decadence
How do you know when a once-thriving society is becoming decadent?
One obvious clue comes at that point when trends that were positive for a long-time start going in the opposite direction.
One indicator of American decadence is declining life expectancy, which before had risen every year for almost a century but flatlined during the middle of the last decade and began dropping toward the end. Covid-19 accelerated a trend that had begun before, mainly as a result of “deaths of despair.” Despair was brought on by the hollowing out of the lower middle and working class in a deindustrializing Midwest. Those caught up in this process lost their jobs or suffered stagnant wages. They sought relief in drug use, alcoholism, even suicide.
A second indicator of decadence is a gap between expectation and result. A prime example is the inability/unwillingness of the nation to unite to effectively confront a deadly pandemic. Before the pandemic, experts from Johns Hopkins University rated the United States as the country in the world best positioned to tackle such an emergency. Instead, the U.S. Covid-19 death toll is arguably the worst in the world, surely the worst in relation to the country’s scientific and economic resources.
The irony is that the country’s whose scientific and industrial prowess created a vaccine in record time, helping save millions of lives worldwide, is the homeland of the most militant vaccine refusers and the wild anti-science conspiracy theory spinners. The United States seems to have a bimodal distribution of intelligence and knowledge. The country has the most Nobel Prize winners in science in the world. It also has the biggest, most militant and most influential population of science deniers.
The first group admires Anthony Fauci, with the cool regard that scientists confer on one they consider one of the best among equals. The second group worships Trump with a quasi-religious fervor. The popes, at the height of their power and mystique, were never as infallible as Trump.
Vaccine refuseniks claim they don’t know what to believe but the facts could not be any clearer.
“The latest data from the C.D.C., which is based on data from 25 states and cities, shows that the death rate for unvaccinated people is 14 times as high as that for vaccinated people.” Those who choose to remain unvaccinated are betting their lives on a losing hand. (Why Covid Death Rates Are Rising for Some Groups – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
A third troubling sign is the drop in the birth rate. A good part of this is accounted for by more women in the workforce, which is a good thing. But a major portion of the explanation for declining natality is that the United States provides less support for families and children than any developed country in the world.
There are many other signs of national decline, too many to describe in detail here: extreme economic inequality, racial strife, and a long string of costly, losing wars culminating in the rout in Afghanistan.
How to Reverse Decline: What Ought to Happen
· Drop the Hubris. The self-image of the nation as “exceptional” is at the root of military overextension and requires a vast allocation of money to the economy of death versus a miserly provision of resources for the economy of life.
· Accept reality. The United States has the richest people on the planet but not the highest standard of living for the population as measured by the UN Human Development Index (HDI).
· Put the money on human needs. The mediocre ranking of the United States on the UN HDI is the consequence of higher infant mortality, poverty, and other indicators of well-being in the United States. The crusade for minimal government and the phobia against “entitlement” are two of the principal culprits.
· If you can’t embrace diversity, learn to live with it. Those suffering from “white panic” must get over it. You have no choice. You can’t emigrate to South Africa anymore. The 1950s are not coming back. Don’t waste your life for another “Lost Cause.” The black and white America of 1950s television and of your nostalgia is gone with the wind. Diversity is here to stay.
· Give up on the Republican Party. The GOP is hyper-partisan. It’s basically the party of American apartheid and pitiless plutocrats. That the GOP is populist is poppycock. When you hear a talking head referring to the Republican Party as populist replace it in your mind with the word fascist. Bipartisanship today amounts to symbiosis between a cobra and a mouse. Hopeless.
· Speak truth, especially to power. Even a man as brave as Colin Powell admitted in his autobiography that he knew early on the Vietnam War was a disaster but did not tell superiors for fear it would destroy his career. Today, Republicans in Washington are mainly cowardly careerists. Scared to speak truth to and about Trump, they lie to everybody, to the American people and to themselves. They don’t believe in the Big Lie but promote it anyway. If they told the truth that Biden won, the red-headed oaf would come after them and they would pee in their politician pants.
· Adopt the preferential option for the poor. This means policy making that gives top priority to how it affects the disadvantaged. For forty years, under the spell of “the free market,” we have done the exact opposite. Low, low taxes for the rich. Low, low wages for the average person. After four decades of this, we have reached a terminal point, ultra-capitalism, a stage-4 social malignancy.
· Stop calling right-wing Democrats moderates. Joe Manchin is no moderate. He is a rich, smug conservative who represents one of the poorest states, which receives more entitlement money than almost any other state, and stands in the way of aid to the poor. A regular good old boy if you spell it SOB.
· Look for the roots of problems. Our Covid-19 disaster has not been caused by any single thing, even Trump. The roots go farther back and are deeper. They go to the totality of policies and the mindset of ultra-capitalism. Laissez-faire, let them do as they want (and damn the consequences). Millions unvaccinated. A million Covid deaths by the end of 2022. More massive forest fires, huge hurricanes, and record droughts.
That’s how it is. Nothing to be done. Laissez-faire. Let them do as they will. Bury the dead and say prayers for the family.
