America in decline

I don’t pay much attention to the views of Europeans about America. However, I make an exception when the views they express accord with mine.

That was the case during my recent trip to France and Italy when I heard several Europeans express amazement that the two men most likely to be elected president in 2024 are Joe Biden — a doddering 80-year-old hack — and Donald Trump — a morally bankrupt narcissist who is almost as old as Biden. How, they wondered, can a country as great as America be on the verge of serving up two such flawed retreads as its presidential nominees?

I’ve wondered the same thing. I’ve also wondered whether, if Biden and Trump are the nominees, this will be evidence of national decline.

Maybe not. My view of the two men is subjective and might be wrong. Many Americans disagree with at least one of my assessments, though I doubt that many disagree with both. In any case, a weak slate of presidential candidates might not be a reliable barometer of the state of the union.

I also think it’s problematic when older Americans like me to start talking about national decline. I’ve read enough biographies and memoirs to know that such talk is par for the course as one approaches the course’s end. How confident can we be in our ability to avoid conflating our own decline with that of our country or in our ability to view the America of our youth as it really was?

Still, there’s plenty of objective evidence of national decline. Homicides have skyrocketed in recent years. On average, adjusted for age, the annual U.S. suicide rate increased by 30 percent between 2000 and 2020.

There’s an epidemic of drug abuse, such that approximately one million Americans have died from overdoses of fentanyl since 1999. A provisional count from the CDC found that more than 105,000 Americans died due to drug overdoses in 2022.

According to Gallup, 29 percent of U.S. adults report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. The percentage of Americans who currently have, or are being treated for, depression has also increased, to 17.8 percent, up about seven points over the same period.

Meanwhile, in what has been described as a mental health crisis, many students reportedly are refusing to attend school. And student test scores have plummeted to levels not seen in decades.

The U.S. fertility rate is now 1,784 births per woman. In 2007, the rate was 2.052.

In many of the cases cited above, the pandemic helps account for the bad numbers. However, most of the downward trends pre-date the pandemic. And arguably, our inability to bounce back from the pandemic is, itself, evidence of decline.

Race relations are difficult to measure objectively. However, a Rasmussen poll found that only 53 percent of black Americans said they agreed that “it’s okay to be white.”  The poll was widely criticized and another polling firm, purporting to correct for flaws in the Rasmussen survey, found that 67 of blacks conceded “it’s okay to be white.” That’s still an alarmingly low percentage in my view.

Polls aside, I don’t see how any fair-minded observer could say that race relations are as good today as they were, say, 15 years ago when Barack Obama was first elected president.

Since 2016, we have witnessed (1) an attempt to bring down a president via what arguably amounts to the dirtiest political trick in American history — the phony Russia collusion story planted by the Democrats and improperly pursued by the FBI and (2) an attempt to block the certification of another president’s victory via an unprecedented storming of the Capitol by a mob riled up by the losing candidate.

Neither of these disgraces would have occurred in a healthy, well-functioning democracy.

Now, let’s put social and sociological concerns to one side and consider hard power. The Economist compiled an index of hard power based on GDP per person, military expenditures, and non-military GDP. For what it’s worth, this index finds that U.S. hard power has declined by nearly 20 percent in this century.

However one looks at the question, then, it seems clear that, in absolute terms, the U.S. is in decline. But are we in decline compared to other powers?

The Economist index finds that China’s hard power has tripled in this century (but still trails America’s by a significant margin) China may be peaking, though. Its fertility rate is a meagre 1.28 births per woman. And the current regime’s ideologically-driven statist policies are likely to be a drag on the Chinese economy.

The top European nations in the Economist’s hard power index barely register when compared to the U.S. And European fertility rates are unimpressive. France’s is comparable to America’s. Italy’s is comparable to China’s.

But there’s only so much consolation one can take in the woes of other nations. These woes don’t make our homicide, suicide, drug overdose, and depression statistics any less grim.

And at least France and Italy have young, dynamic leaders — Emmanuel Macron (age 45) and Giorgia Meloni (age 46), respectively. (Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is only 43. It’s too early, I think, to assess his leadership.)

Macron has bravely tackled France’s entitlement system — something neither Biden nor Trump is willing to do. Meloni has taken decisive action to curb illegal immigration. Biden has shown no such willingness and Trump’s efforts were thwarted to a significant degree.

America has dynamic and tested young leaders, especially on the Republican side. Yet, we may have to settle for a Biden-Trump rematch the public doesn’t seem to want.

We should be able to do better than that. If we don’t, I think it’s a bad sign.