What Americans Are Thinking as 2024 Dawns

They're thinking major institutions in the country are in a state of rot. They're right. They're also thinking the way out of this mess is murky at best.

Polls are far from infallible, but they often tell you something worthwhile. This is especially true if they have a decently credible track record and have not become shills for the Left.

In my view, Gallup meets that description, so I paid attention when it came out recently with, “The Year in Review: 2023’s Most Notable Findings.” Here’s an eye-opening sample.

In other words, while 50 years ago, about three-quarters of our people trusted what they read in the paper and heard on TV, now less than a third do, and a greater number, close to 40%, say they have no trust in the media at all.

This is grim news for the country. An honest and trusted media is national asset. We don’t have that trust anymore, and for good reason. The media has lost public confidence because it forfeited it through its bias and, to be blunt, its lying. Probably the best example of the latter was the breathless coverage of Russiagate, in which the press relentlessly pushed the idea that Trump was a Russian stooge, only to come up empty (and to have it come out that, in the course of the Mueller inquiry, one FBI attorney flat-out lied to the FISA court in order to obtain a wiretap order for Trump associate Carter Page). The other big example was the press’s connivance in months of COVID scaremongering, in which the dangers of the disease (while real, certainly if you were old) were slanted upwards and the dangers and costs of the lockdowns were slanted downwards. Millions of children have suffered long-term damage as a result.

There are more frequent reminders, too, one of which I have started to call the press’s peddling “anticipatory disaster.” Case in point: Every few months, we hear about all the Really Bad Hardship that’s going to land on our heads with a “government shutdown,” which we are simultaneously told could be averted if only the Republicans would cave be reasonable. Only the shutdown never actually happens, because there’s a last-minute deal to patch things over for a while longer.

The kicker is that the press knew all along, or had strong reason to believe, that there would be a deal, and no shutdown. The whole thing was just a bogeyman. But it was a useful bogeyman to the Left, so it got reported, day after day, as if it were fact. (See also, “Climate Change, or How You’re Going to Boil in the Ocean When You Go to the Beach this Summer”).

Well, yeah, sure, but I think I’ll go anyway.

Next item from Gallup: “Bad Grades for Higher Education”

I believe most or all of the polling on this subject was completed before the heads of three of the country’s most prestigious universities outed themselves as bumbling and not-very-honest ciphers at best, or anti-Semites at worst. Beyond that, as we all know by now, the most prominent of these leaders, Ms. Genocide-Depends-on-Context, a/k/a The Ovens Weren’t All That Bad Depending on How You Look At It, has had some other troubles, troubles more directly tied to what we once expected from universities.

Specifically, she has been shown to be a serial cheater — a plagiarist going back years, apparently all the way to her doctoral dissertation. Harvard held on as long as it could, terrified by (or in sympathy with) the DEI brownshirts who would not take kindly to making the first black Harvard president also the one with the shortest tenure. Still, Claudine Gay held on longer than Liz Magill at Penn, who had “only” the anti-Semitic problem and not the academic scandal. (Bonus quiz: Given that much, why did Ms. Gay stay in place longer than Ms. Magill? Everyone knows the answer, but few will say it out loud: Magill is white and Gay is black. This is really depressing, yet a wonderfully apt hallmark of how completely identity has overtaken achievement in higher education. Can any serious person wonder why the public’s opinion of academia has tanked?).

Next in Gallup’s survey: Shifting party identification.

Gallup found that, 15 years ago, 34% of adults identified as Democrats and 27% as Republicans. Now, after four years of Trump and three of Biden, the parties are tied at 28% each. I’d like to think that this is because the country understands that it was better off — more prosperous and stronger — under Republican policies than the ones we have now. But to be honest, I have my doubts. Instead, I suspect it’s two other things.

First, a huge majority sees that Biden is just too old and too maladroit for the job. A recent poll showed that, among all adults, 71% thought that he’s too old to be an effective President; only 27% disagreed. Even a slight majority of Democrats, 51%, concurred in this view. This is particularly bad news for the head of a Party whose membership is declining: The press can gussy up many things for Joe Biden, but even the press is no match for the march of time.

The second factor is more gossamer but, my instincts tell me, even stronger. It’s related to Paul’s discussion of why so many people feel the economy is in bad shape even while the objective data suggest otherwise.

The problem, to borrow from Jimmy Carter no less, is malaise. Things feel wrong, even vaguely ominous, in the country. Standards are visibly falling in academia, military readiness, journalism, race relations, energy readiness, thrift (such of it as there is anymore) and even law enforcement, where accountability is out and “healing” is in. Congress can barely operate. The border is out of control to an extent even the administration can no longer deny — but cannot, or is not willing to, fix either. The more insane waftings of Wokeness are poisoning nearly every corner of our culture. And in ten months, we’re likely to have an election between two men neither of whom is fit to govern.

With that as the state of play, it would be shocking if the country were not pessimistic.