America Is Doing Just Fine
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As Americans celebrated the Fourth of July by watching baseball, fireworks, and Joey Chestnut hammering home his 16th win in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, poor Uncle Sam labored through the mid-summer celebration beleaguered and under siege from all sides. News items over the course of the holiday weekend reported that Americans were feeling more skeptical of their country’s future and less patriotic . Seventy-four percent believe America is headed in the wrong direction, and a great majority dread the presidential rematch America seems doomed to face.
Uncle Sam deserves a modern-day Atticus Finch to argue his case before the American people, but he doesn’t have one.
The usual suspects, who once regularly delivered garrulous Eric Stratton –style defenses of all things American, are now scattered to the winds by the tumult of Trumpism. Neither the Capitol riot nor a barrage of indictments have stopped these hucksters from slavishly siding with Donald Trump in his attacks against the same American institutions that conservatives once defended against enemies real or imagined—whether the dirty hippies who tried to levitate the Pentagon or the Commies on the Church Committee .
Trump conservatives really are having their own “hippie” moment , turning against American institutions.
The opposing counsel’s bench will likewise be unhelpful, because it is packed with a motley crew of progressive politicians, left-wing think tankers, and journalists who are far more comfortable prosecuting claims against American greed, U.S. imperialism, and ruling-class dominance than mounting muscular defenses of America.
Rallying around the flag still comes off as a bit gauche at Berkeley barbecues and East Hampton clambakes. So Uncle Sam lumbers on through another sweltering July, poked and prodded by political hacks of all stripes.
Liberals once gained favor among their base by attacking the Pentagon’s top brass, but now it is Republican members of Congress who longingly swoon over Russia’s manly military while trashing U.S. generals and our men and women in uniform. Those GOP attacks come despite the fact that America’s military is more powerful today relative to the rest of the world than at any time since the Second World War.
Unlike in years past, American allies no longer grouse about the U.S. “leading from behind” or burrowing itself into a self-defeating “America First” hole. Instead, the U.S. is first among equals in a dynamic and expanding NATO alliance that just added a new member with more than 800 miles of Russian border, and that has provided a devastating response to Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Looking east, the United States has finally begun its pivot to Asia, strengthening military cooperation with Japan, the Philippines, Guam, South Korea, and Australia. The current disruption in U.S.-Sino relations may have less to do with spy balloons and diplomatic missteps than with Xi Jinping’s rational fear of being hemmed in by an increasingly muscular U.S. military presence surrounding the South China Sea. President Joe Biden’s recent diplomatic overtures toward India were likewise calculated to contain China’s regional ambitions.
The most significant U.S. geopolitical failure of late was the country’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, a move promised by the past three presidents and supported by 70 percent of Americans before the evacuation. Even after the chaos unfolded in Kabul, most Americans told pollsters they supported Biden’s decision to get U.S. troops out after 20 years. Be assured that nobody in Moscow or Beijing is still looking at the Afghanistan withdrawal in light of recent events and parroting Republican’s un-American talking point that our armed forces are “woke” and “weak.”
While we’re on the topic of the right’s meltdown over all things woke, the Republican Party’s hypocritical attacks against American colleges and universities display the same anti-institutional impulses.
Once again, the ideological tables have been turned. In the past, it was leftist radicals who rioted on college campuses and laid siege to university presidents’ offices. Now Trump-supporting rightists bravely pull themselves off their fainting couches to declare war against the same elite institutions from which they proudly graduated not so long ago.
But give those frail hypocrites their due; their pride on graduation day was not misplaced.
Every year, American colleges and universities dominate rankings of the best schools in the world. Maybe that’s why some of the most powerful political and business leaders across the globe keep sending their children to American colleges. They do so for the same reason many Republican politicians with Ivy League degrees worked hard to get admitted into Yale, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania years ago: because nobody in the world does higher education better than the United States of America.
All of this anti-American drivel coming from Trumpists can be tedious. But stay with me, because there’s much more to be said in America’s defense.
David Brooks: Despite everything you think you know, America is on the right track
Childhood poverty has dropped to the lowest level on record; teenage pregnancy has done the same; the U.S. dollar has experienced generational highs over the past year; unemployment recently hit a 54-year low; the number of job openings this past year also hit record highs.
Overall, the U.S. economy continues to surge forward despite economists’ dire predictions. America’s GDP grew to $25 trillion last year; Texas has a bigger economy than Russia, and although California is routinely rebuked by right-wing critics, it has the fourth-strongest economy in the world—stronger than Britain’s, France’s, Canada’s, or India’s. The United States and its European allies collectively run an economic machine that doubles China’s stagnating output. Despite record debt levels, a stubborn case of inflation, and other structural challenges, American capitalism continues to drive and dominate the world economy.
All of this is not to say that the United States is free of challenges. Like any great power, we have our fair share of political and moral failings.
Our Declaration of Independence was written by a slaveholder, the government has yet to address what it owes to Native Americans, and the right of women to control their own bodies has been shattered by Supreme Court rulings and radical state legislation.
But it was American democracy that provided a swift political rebuke to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and led to right-wing defeats in red states such as Kansas, Kentucky, and Wisconsin. The political backlash to Roe ’s demise has been so dramatic that even Ann Coulter and The Wall Street Journal editorial page now take exception to the GOP’s extreme abortion stance.
And when Abraham Lincoln emancipated millions of enslaved Americans in 1863, he was relying on the logic of that same Declaration of Independence, which Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed “a promissory note” to all Americans.
James Madison, another slaveholder, wrote a Constitution that provided the checks and balances that led the same high court that overturned Roe to rebuff Donald Trump’s most autocratic plans. As politically disorienting as it may seem after the overturning of Roe and affirmative action, the Roberts Court also finally stopped Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election, and is now allowing criminal cases against him to move forward.
So yes, it’s true that a fulsome defense of Uncle Sam often requires dialectical thinking. But remember this: Even with all of its failings, America has fed and freed more human beings than any other country in history . And despite the blather that cable-news hosts spit at you daily, your country is doing pretty damn well.
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'RINO' alert! ... @!@
He would have to be a Republican still to be a RINO.
The douchebag works for MSNBC. The only way he could sink lower is by joining the Lincoln Project. I am sure they have a permanent spot open for him once MSNBC finishes using him up.
But he got his anti-Trump and Republican tirade out of the way- and didn't once mention what Brandon the Human Fuck Up Machine and Democrats have done to this country. He is truly a well heeled repentant apologist. He can take solace in that as the country burns down around his ears.
It appears Joe was writing about you. My guess is it will take at least a generation for the 'modern' GoP to get over its infatuation with populism.
You and he wish.
Some of us don't have our heads stuck so far up Brandon's and the Democrat Party's asses that we can't see what they are doing to this country.
They are far worse than Trump could ever dream of being.
Keep screaming "But Trruuummmmppppp!!!!!!" it won't stop this country's downward spiral thanks to leftists.
Colonel Sanders needs a bigger bucket for all the Chicken Littles swamping the land.
Surely you mean the folks still whining about SCOTUS decisions and labeling others fascists for daring to disagree with them.
Childhood poverty has dropped to the lowest level on record; teenage pregnancy has done the same; the U.S. dollar has experienced generational highs over the past year; unemployment recently hit a 54-year low; the number of job openings this past year also hit record highs.
Overall, the U.S. economy continues to surge forward despite economists’ dire predictions. America’s GDP grew to $25 trillion last year; Texas has a bigger economy than Russia, and although California is routinely rebuked by right-wing critics, it has the fourth-strongest economy in the world—stronger than Britain’s, France’s, Canada’s, or India’s. The United States and its European allies collectively run an economic machine that doubles China’s stagnating output. Despite record debt levels, a stubborn case of inflation, and other structural challenges, American capitalism continues to drive and dominate the world economy.
Brandon is destroying this country! 🤯
25 million trumpsters are hoping that their feckless leader runs out the clock on his current and future indictments, while 300 million americans are hoping that the clock runs out on the criminal insurrectionist faction of the GOP.
If I ever mean what you do, put me down as having joined a cult ... alas Vampirella and the Dominatrixes turned me down circa Kate Beckinsale took over the roost.
Okay, I'll stand corrected.
You are concerned only about some Chicken Littles.
Got it.
Interesting that defending all things American requires a particular type of conservative. The author blames Trumpism but no matter how much that is twisted, Trumpism has not silenced liberal voices. Liberals are not known for any sort of rousing defense of America or Uncle Sam.
The Atlantic is only being a mouthpiece for neoliberal apologists.
Being in my eighth decade, I've pretty much seen and experienced it all. Segregation, civil rights, world wars, undeclared wars, protests of every type, shootings, assassinations, the highs and lows of America over the years.
I would have to say the nonsense currently permeating our republic rates close to the top of the ultimate ignorance of part of the masses.
Outrage sells to a certain demographic. It helps to keep them ignorant to maintain the cash flow. Even faced with truths and facts they rather cling to the lies and old rivalries.
See the SPLC and their poverty palace
What a sterling example!
Which demographic is that, exactly?
the demographic that usually asks that particular question...
Or maybe it is the folks pushing the narrative like in post 3.1
"Seemingly" half the country has bought into Ayn Rand's 'Virtue of Selfishness'.
D'ya really think the average MAGA has read Rand? Or any book whatsoever?
They read books written by the Fox News hosts, and I am not being facetious. That is what they read.
I agree that they buy them. Spending on MAGA gear is a sign of Tribal Loyalty. Kinda like tithing.
I'm not at all sure that they then read them.