Blow Up Your TV
One of the casualties of the coronavirus was the death of singer/songwriter, John Prine in 2020. I have been thinking about him more and more as I read all of the gloomy accounts of the state of our country. The accounts come in two flavors: things are terrible right now and we’re headed for a Civil War. John Prine had an answer, but we’ll get to that later.
In the former administration, there were complaints of “ethnic and class conflict, democratic and institutional backsliding,” including inequality. Some also have argued, perhaps correctly, that “you’re just one wrong joke or online post from being sentenced to a social death — canceled, to use the modern phrase.” That’s been called the “politics of personal destruction.”
More recently, there are complaints about the crime wave. Homicides are on the rise, as are robberies and some district attorney’s are either not charging criminals or are actively letting them out of jail. In foreign matters, the complaints are that we, as a nation, are perceived as being weak, particularly unable to stand up to dictators or help our allies.
We have the highest inflation in 30 years and a very low labor participation rate. Between January of 2021 and January of 2022, we have not gotten above 62 percent of the potential labor force actually working.
Some complain that we have become a less civil country with “rude behavior becoming the ‘new normal.’” In 2019, 93 percent of Americans thought that incivility was a problem and 74 percent thought it was getting worse. Tom Nichols, an author and columnist says it is because we have a sense of entitlement and “We’ve become impatient, selfish, self-absorbed and increasingly violent.”
It also hasn’t helped that we are coming through a long period of highly controversial vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and school closures.
More generally, some feel that our democracy is in retreat after a “decade of creeping authoritarianism” with “57 percent of surveyed people saying the United States is no longer the model for democracy it used to be.”
Between many lawless protests around the country ending up in the Capital riot, an Axios-Ipsol poll found that 79 percent of surveyed Americans said that the US is “falling apart.” Seventy percent said the country is at risk of failing and two-thirds say that the country is on the wrong track.
Finally, some say we are so politically divided that we are on the road to Civil War. In 2021, nearly half felt that a future civil war was likely. Given our geographical mixing, I’m not sure how that would work out?
But Glenn Carle, a former Deputy National Intelligence Officer, while acknowledging problems, reminds us that:
"The United States has been the most powerful country in the world for 130 years and has actively led the international community for 75. WIth only 4.25% of the world’s population, the US still accounts for a little more than 24% of the world’s GNP. its military is by far the world’s most powerful, with a budget larger than the next 12 biggest militaries combined. The US has the highest per capita income of any major country and the most diverse and creative economy the world has ever seen. It leads in virtually every technology critical for economic and military predominance, from artificial intelligence to materials science. Its democracy has set a standard the world has looked up to for 240 years."
There always has been and always will be a market for those who predict that this country will fail. If reading and hearing all of these dire accounts and predictions are making you disillusioned, the same was true in 1979 when President Carter said we had a “crisis in confidence” that was a “fundamental threat to American democracy…”
We got over it and we’ll get through this as well.
Fifty years ago, John Prine offered one way to help get you through these periods. It’s called “Spanish Pipedream” and it’s about a topless dancer talking to a soldier. Here’s what she told him:
"Blow up your TV / Throw away your paper
Go to the country / Build you a home
Plant a little garden / Eat a lot of peaches
Try an' find Jesus on your own"
Of course, we can’t all do that but tuning out some of the pessimism is certainly possible.