Is America is Headed for Renewal or Ruin? The Answer is Unclear

The country is increasingly set up like a rigged carnival game

Is the United States doomed or is there still hope for a brighter future? That is the existential question consuming virtually every contemplative person that I know.  The less reflective are largely fine people, but they choose to remain oblivious, distracted by myriad gadgets or entertainment escapism.  Why channel your energy into politics when there are countless movie channels? Why face the music when you can stream endless music options on Spotify?

I understand why people tune out. The country is increasingly set up like a carnival game. If you play along, the slick carnival barker assures you that you have a chance to win the big prize. To raise your hopes, the giant Teddy Bear is strategically placed on the wall. All you must do is play by the rules and throw the basketball into the hoop. By the second shot your hopes are dashed. You realize that the ball is large, and the basket is too small. The game is rigged, and your chances of winning that bear are slim to none.  If you complain, they point to pictures on the wall showcasing the handful of lucky winners – which makes you a whiny loser.

The explosion of anger in modern America is based on multitudes of people who keep shooting the carnival ball and missing. However, with decades of disinvestment in education, they don’t have the intellectual tools to realize they are being had. They either keep blaming themselves for the missed shots and promise to try harder. Or they scapegoat someone else for their failures. At no point do they blame the carnival executives for creating an unfair game, because they represent society’s “winners” who are kind enough to offer them “opportunities” to succeed. So, the masses keep chucking up bricks as the disorienting carnival music plays and falling further into despair when they go home empty handed with less money and no giant stuffed bear.

Everywhere you turn in America someone has their hand out looking to pick your pocket. Ironically, the biggest thieves are those who least need the money. For example, the multibillion-dollar cable industry charges exorbitant $100-$250 fees for cable/Internet packages that are a necessity for home businesses or to live in contemporary society.

Then you are saddled with obscene monthly healthcare and insurance costs that you may rarely need. But when you finally try to collect money or benefits, you still may end up broke if you haven’t read the fine print. Or, maybe the insurance company won’t pay for the drug your doctor recommends, such as medicine to combat obesity. And God forbid you ever need an ambulance. You’re better off jogging down the freeway clutching your heart than receiving an ambulance bill.   

Meanwhile, rent is rising while wages are not keeping up with inflation. CNN reports:

The national median rent was $1,827 a month in April, up 16.7% from a year ago, according to a report from Realtor.com. Rent has been steadily increasing since early last year. If recent trends continue, the report projects the typical rent could be more than $2,000 a month by August.

For many people, the American Dream is a pipe dream with homeownership as elusive and far-fetched as yacht ownership. Home prices rose 20.6% in March from the year before, CNN Business reported.

Even if you have a good job in a large city, the costs of scraping by in money-sucking metropolises, and the unrelenting stress of basic survival, leaves little room for savings or planning a dignified retirement. Without a decent home or nest egg, starting a family is often an unrealistic option. Even if you do choose to start a family, how do you afford childcare or save for college if you’re not a corporate lawyer, Wall Street banker, successful entertainer or have a trust fund?

People won’t admit it, but modern America is largely run by a cartel of con artists. The very people who are supposed to have your back are stabbing you there. Our politicians – though mostly Republican -- are bought off by corporations who are looking to maximize profit at your expense or myopic single-issue organizations that disdain political compromise. The people know something is amiss, but because high school long abandoned civics, they can’t quite put their finger on the problem or what to do about it.

Into this vacuum step right wing vultures who leverage their money and monopoly power to manipulate the confused masses. Their means is to purchase media companies like FOX News or talk radio companies to distract people from the genuine sources of their problems.

Without critical thinking skills in much of the population and right-wing media spewing propaganda, you get angry people who can’t think straight. They do things like blame Joe Biden for high gas prices when actual causes of the problem are the war in Ukraine and corporate price gouging. The Guardian reports:

Chief executives from the largest oil and gas companies received nearly $45m more in combined total compensation in 2021 as compared to 2020 amid the steep rise in gasoline prices across the US over the last year, a new report states.

Kyle Herrig, president of government watchdog Accountable said.  “Americans will not soon forget that when they were struggling to fill their tanks, oil and gas companies made record profits and decided to give that money to wealthy industry executives and shareholders rather than stabilizing gas prices.”

Sadly, people don’t understand what’s really happening and they think President Biden is a magician who can adjust gas prices with the wave of a magic presidential wand. Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn gleefully Tweeted, “Joe Biden keeps making history! Gas is at $4.61 a gallon.”

The truth is a bit more complicated than Blackburn’s sardonic Tweet, with higher prices at the pump a global phenomenon.  According to Forbes:

Even at an average price of more than $4.00 per gallon, Americans are still paying much less than many other industrialized nations to fill up… The priciest major European economy was Germany, charging $8.23 per gallon. The most expensive gallon of gas included in the ranking was sold in Hong Kong at $10.72, which means that filling up even a small car would break the $100 barrier.

When people are in the grip of deprivation, when they are suffering from exhaustion, their social status is declining and they see no end to their perpetual plight, they are easy marks for charlatans who offer simplistic answers to complicated problems. Trump and his ilk know that people who fall behind are more likely to fall off the deep end. The MAGA movement exists to throw these desperate dupes a lifeline of lies. Trump’s greatest political skill is that he intuitively understands that the person with no hope will eagerly latch onto false hope as a coping mechanism.  

For MAGA followers, the real world has become too difficult to navigate, so they create a make-believe universe of imagined enemies and contrived heroes that numbs their pain. From this fantasy world springs conspiracy theories to explain why they have fallen behind. Those who indulge the imaginary universe become stars and those who burst the bubble of BS with facts and reality become villains, such as Anthony Fauci.  

This explains why functioning adults would vote for a certifiable basket case like Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. In a healthy country, she’d be back in rural Georgia running a CrossFit. In our soul sick society, she’s an elected member of Congress cooking up ever-weirder conspiracy theories to fill the burning need for escapism in her constituent’s empty, deteriorating lives.

“The government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life,” Greene said during a recent broadcast of “MTG Live.” “They want to know when you’re eating. They want to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish [sic]. So you’ll probably get a little zap inside your body that’ll say ‘No, no, don’t eat a real cheeseburger, you need to eat…the fake meat from Bill Gates.”

The fact that America elects crackpots like Greene is what is driving smart people to question the future viability of America. In a Yahoo News/YouGov poll taken after the recent racist massacre in Buffalo, 64-percent of Republicans describe discrimination against White people “as big a problem as discrimination against Black people in the U.S.” Does a country that believes this nonsense have a chance, or is it a fallen superpower with its best days in the rearview mirror?

I personally believe that America can recover for the simple reason that most people want to be free. They don’t want to live in a Putin or Xi type of dictatorship filled with propaganda and lies. The sane majority also see the impending demise of Roe v. Wade and attacks on LGBTQ people and immigrants and are aghast. They don’t want to live in a dystopian Gilead-like theocracy, which is what the GOP is peddling. What the majority wants is a renewed American Dream, not the forcible installment of an American right-wing nightmare.

There are no longer reasonable compromises to save America because there is no bargaining with the brainwashed. The answer is resolutely defeating this miserable movement and driving a stake through its rotten heart. But these fanatics see themselves as soldiers in a holy war against The Enlightenment.

Do the enlightened have the wherewithal and willpower to stop the barbarians from storming America’s gate? Is it already too late – are we half past midnight in our nation’s democratic demise? Are we headed to renewal or ruin? These are the unanswered questions that keep my wiser friends tossing and turning in bed at night. If you’re paying attention, I’m guessing you’re wrestling with these uncomfortable questions too.