Our Miserable 21st Century
From work to income to health to social mobility, the year 2000 marked
the beginning of what has become a distressing era for the United
States
"On
the morning of November 9, 2016, America’s elite—its talking and
deciding classes—woke up to a country they did not know. To most
privileged and well-educated Americans, especially those living in its
bicoastal bastions, the election of Donald Trump had been a thing almost
impossible even to imagine. What sort of country would go and elect
someone like Trump as president? Certainly not one they were familiar
with, or understood anything about.
Whatever
else it may or may not have accomplished, the 2016 election was a sort
of shock therapy for Americans living within what Charles Murray
famously termed “the bubble” (the protective barrier of prosperity and
self-selected associations that increasingly shield our best and
brightest from contact with the rest of their society). The very fact of
Trump’s election served as a truth broadcast about a reality that could
no longer be denied: Things out there in America are a whole lot different from what you thought.
Yes,
things are very different indeed these days in the “real America”
outside the bubble. In fact, things have been going badly wrong in
America since the beginning of the 21st century."
[Commentary]
This is NOT a political screed, but rather a thorough analysis of social and economic factors which explain the worsening condition of our country since around 2000. [clipper]
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