If It Feels Like Our Societies Are in Decline, That’s Because They Are

What the Surest Sign of Decline Is, and Why It Matters

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When I look at America — and Europe — I see a sad fact. One that troubles me to no end. The ongoing death of the dream. And that bodes ill for the future. Because what binds our societies together more than anything else is just that, a dream. The dream. Without it, confidence becomes insecurity, optimism becomes pessimism, trust becomes distrust. A vicious cycle sets in. So let’s discuss it.

The American Dream — what’s left of it — is breaking down from every angle, in every way. If you’re young, there’s generation after generation facing sharp, calamitous downward mobility. If you’re old, the system is…you get bilked for every last penny of your life savings…and then you’re left on your own. The intergenerational wealth transfer a healthy society depends on is in this way being stifled, hitting young people with a double whammy — and if that’s all that’s left when you’re old, being exploited mercilessly to the last penny, being bankrupted and then left for dead…what’s the point of living an honest, decent, hard-working life anyways?

Now. I don’t have to tell you about the death of the dream — unless you’re a billionaire, really, you’re living it. But I think that we don’t talk about it nearly enough — not anymore. What does the death of a, the, dream do?

Think about American politics — the current state of them — for a second. America’s trapped in a vicious battle.It’s about negative politics, and I mean that in a technical sense. Taking what were once inalienable rights away from whole social groups — snap — just like that. You might have read the story of a doctor who was disciplined for giving a 10 year old reproductive healthcare — welcome to early Gilead. The situation’s become so extreme that fresh faces in the GOP grow more extreme by the day — now, there’s a fanatic so fanatical he wants to raise the voting age to 25. There goes your Mother Right, kids.

In America, all this is called a “culture war.” But that’s a profoundly mistaken way to think about it, to help people make sense of it, and the media fails when it employs this frame. It’s emphatically not a “culture” anything when everyone from women to doctors to teachers to kids to parents are being criminalized, “disciplined,” punished, investigated. It’s far beyond that — it’s a form of politics. Negative politics, and the formal meaning of that is a politics that’s become consumed with taking things, rights, norms, values, away from people. Leaving them with less than they had before. Less democracy, less freedom, less…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.