By and large, I agree with your post and the warning to go easy on the doom and gloom. But I have to respectfully disagree with how you’re framing the threat to American democracy. At this point, the gravest threat to American democracy is not coming from the prospect of a second Trump term. It’s coming from the fact that Trumpism has made right-wing authoritarianism cool here, and state government all over the country have gladly picked things up where Trump left off, which is hugely consequential given how much power states wield in our system. We’re seeing this in state legislatures’ systematic efforts to strip power away from local governments and even limit private businesses’ ability to run themselves as they see fit (e.g., by banning mask mandates); in renewed efforts to ban content or censor teachers’ speech in public schools (an effort which is sure to spread to private schools and higher education in 2023 legislative sessions); and in renewed efforts at gerrymandering, voter suppression, and politicization of vote-counting, which will also directly impact what the federal government looks like in coming years. And DeSantis has taken the state-level authoritarianism to a new level with his political retaliation at Disney for speaking their mind on the Don’t Say Gay law, which represents not just socially conservative policy (which is compatible with democracy), but a direct assault on rule of law. What’s worse, states are learning from each others’ illiberal experimentation. Just as states (and cities) are laboratories for democracy, apparently they can also be laboratories for democratic backsliding. While states aren’t necessarily dismantling separation of powers or checks and balances, they are systematically allowing an extreme, minority faction to seize all the levers of power and then use those levers of power to go after their enemies. If the Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin governorships flip in November, you can bet that those states will replicate what’s been happening this year in Texas, Florida and elsewhere. This isn’t a distant 2024 threat; it’s a real-time, bottom-up assault on democracy in the states.
Good post. Statistics may be boring, but they are always better evidence of trends than anecdotes. I'll disagree with you about Afghanistan, but to me it was a failure of judgment, not a symptom of weakness or will.
> Do you think a “failing empire” or Rome 2.0 or whatever your favorite historical analogy is
> could have executed such a quick and skillful strategy to parry, weaken, and ultimately
> defeat one of its biggest rivals?
Rome did exactly this at the same time the Republic was falling apart. The Mithridatic Wars from 89 to 63 BC defeated a skilled and effective antagonist in Mithridates, but Rome was in pretty bad shape at the time. There had been a literal civil war just the year before, the political system was polarized to the point of dysfunction, and the preexisting long slide into autocracy didn't stop.
I think the smart Roman analogy for modern America is not the late empire but the late republic -- sharply polarized, huge class divisions, saddled with a completely broken political system, but with great underlying strength.
For an individual perspective, it is more useful to look a real median HH income than looking at overall GDP. HH income has been pretty much flat since at the mid 80s. It's gone up 3% since 1989.
GDP overall is good for looking at the strength of the economy (and the nation!) but median income is better for looking at the quality of life of the citizens. A stagnant quality of life is going to cause general pessimism, especially when combined with increasing inequality. It's not surprising that individual Americans are negative.
I am really puzzled by the "Wage Growth Tracker" graph as it indicates that the 4th quintile has had higher income growth than the 1st quintile since 1998 and that doesn't seem right to me.
America is not "collapsing" I agree. But we are in relative decline and American hegemony is in decline. The recent Ukrainian events notwithstanding, we are in a gradual, probably inevitable situation where our economy will be a smaller percentage of total global GDP. And that's a good thing! Global poverty has been going down. China is still on track to overtake the United States as the world's largest economy in the next decade or so and India is growing fast.
We are transitioning to an economy that requires less fossil fuels but not very quickly and that puts us in competition with other economies that increasingly can afford to pay for oil. China will soon overtake the United States as the world's largest consumer of oil. These are long term secular trends that won't go away anytime soon.
People are particularly gloomy right now, especially as most Americans are seeing their actual standards of living go down right now due to high inflation and moderate wage growth. The top 70% of wage earners at least. And all the other factors Noah mentioned.
I am a glass if half full kind of guy and I appreciate the optimism, but it has to be tempered with some clear eyed consideration of where we are now and where global trends will take us.
I don’t find as much hope as some here. With the pretty much even split in every issue, and both sides saying they wouldn’t mind the other seceding those isn’t much Union in our Union these days. And both sides of the duopoly are still working for their rich contributors instead of their voters.
I’d just add that excessive doomerism also carelessly legitimizes bad narratives.
For every leftist who buys “Rome 2.0”, there’s at least one lunkhead Roganite out there who’s making that same old dumb connection between Obergefell and Gibbon’s claim about homosexuality killing Rome, all because Joe Rogan Does His Own Research.
Now they've seen it can be done. Next time they'll be more prepared, and the next Trump won't be such a moron. Hard to feel super confident in the face of that. Although if they can sit on the Senate / SCOTUS / electoral college, an insurrection may not be necessary. I don't know if that's doomerism, but I am alarmed. I'm also concerned for the people of the nation more than the nation itself.
It just doesn't *feel* like the Democrats are up to the defense of democracy.
Good read, Noah. Society has been morbidly obsessed with the Apocalypse, in one form or another, my entire life. When we are not reaching for a WWII analogy, then we are on our soap boxes prophesizing the end of the world. People need to chill out and enjoy what will be recognized as the calm before the coming storm, assuming that Republicans sweep to power in 2024. Change will follow hard on its heels. That the country won't collapse is about all I'm willing to predict. Well, that and years of strong emotions and raw nerves.
"But now we have Twitter, so this rhetoric gets blasted out to millions of eyeballs and every journalist and politician in the land, while being amplified by every 13-year-old troll and foreign info-op account."
Serious people don't use Twitter. Personally, I only see it in columns where someone has inserted the Tweet. It has no bearing at all on what I think about issues. If everyone would take a month's vacation from Twitter. To paraphrase the great Jackie DeShannon song,
How does this even get published? One of the stupidest essays ever written. "Yes, violent crime is up or inflation is up or American power is down, but it's not as bad as the all-time worst. America is not collapsing." What the left counts as genius couldn't build a lawn-mower.
"From the end of the Civil War through the mid-1930s, SCOTUS upheld segregation and enforced laissez-faire economic doctrine. We will get through this era just fine."
That's a period of 70 years. Hurray! Maybe when I'm dead and buried, my great-grandchildren might be able to see an unfucked Supreme Court.
Thank you for the engaging read. I think much of the doom-mongering stems from a person’s sense of perspective. In each of the cases cited, perspective greatly affects a person’s interpretation of events.
If you are a major supporter of the Roe v. Wade decision then the forthcoming Dobbs decision appears to be a crisis. However, if you have opposed Roe then the pending changes are a triumph. I personally oppose abortion on moral grounds and am pleased that the matter is transitioning from a judicial concern to a political one. The Dobbs decision does not undermine democracy but rather pushes the question of abortion to the States to be resolved as a political issue. The courts cannot mediate conflicting moral frameworks—that is a political task.
Regarding Afghanistan, I think you have under-emphasized a few things. After 2015 it was not really a military occupation by the USA and allies. A single aircraft carrier strike group has more military personnel than the US had in Afghanistan in the post-ISAF period. For all the flaws of the GIROA, it was still the democratically elected government of that country and it was adamant that the Resolute Support mission continue. By the time of the Doha Accords the Afghan conflict would best be characterized as a civil war with the US supporting the elected government against the rebels (Taliban, ISIS-K, etc…). The ANDSF conducted most of the fighting with Allied nations providing military enablers, training and advice. What shocked the world in 2021 was that the US essentially walked away from a sustainable situation (for America) that had broad international support. Now that the GIROA has collapsed and Afghanistan faces a severe famine, much of America has responded with a collective “meh”—as though its ally of 20 years means nothing to it.
If America were so willing to abandon a 20-year military partnership with the GIROA, would it do the same with Taiwan or Ukraine? An interesting question is whether Biden’s actions in Afghanistan factored into Putin’s calculus for invading Ukraine. How far will America go to press its interests? that question appears unresolved.
I do find it incredibly bizarre to criticize the (assumed) Dobbs opinion as "undemocratic". It is literally taking away a judicial restraint on democratically making laws. There are so many ways to criticize this opinion, that this is the one getting harped on is pretty revealing of how "democracy is falling apart" is seemingly the reaction to every perceived bad thing that happens. (And no, not the first time the court has backtracked on a right: remember "liberty of contract"?)
Great, level-headed post
By and large, I agree with your post and the warning to go easy on the doom and gloom. But I have to respectfully disagree with how you’re framing the threat to American democracy. At this point, the gravest threat to American democracy is not coming from the prospect of a second Trump term. It’s coming from the fact that Trumpism has made right-wing authoritarianism cool here, and state government all over the country have gladly picked things up where Trump left off, which is hugely consequential given how much power states wield in our system. We’re seeing this in state legislatures’ systematic efforts to strip power away from local governments and even limit private businesses’ ability to run themselves as they see fit (e.g., by banning mask mandates); in renewed efforts to ban content or censor teachers’ speech in public schools (an effort which is sure to spread to private schools and higher education in 2023 legislative sessions); and in renewed efforts at gerrymandering, voter suppression, and politicization of vote-counting, which will also directly impact what the federal government looks like in coming years. And DeSantis has taken the state-level authoritarianism to a new level with his political retaliation at Disney for speaking their mind on the Don’t Say Gay law, which represents not just socially conservative policy (which is compatible with democracy), but a direct assault on rule of law. What’s worse, states are learning from each others’ illiberal experimentation. Just as states (and cities) are laboratories for democracy, apparently they can also be laboratories for democratic backsliding. While states aren’t necessarily dismantling separation of powers or checks and balances, they are systematically allowing an extreme, minority faction to seize all the levers of power and then use those levers of power to go after their enemies. If the Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin governorships flip in November, you can bet that those states will replicate what’s been happening this year in Texas, Florida and elsewhere. This isn’t a distant 2024 threat; it’s a real-time, bottom-up assault on democracy in the states.
Appreciate the post. Keep them coming.
Good post. Statistics may be boring, but they are always better evidence of trends than anecdotes. I'll disagree with you about Afghanistan, but to me it was a failure of judgment, not a symptom of weakness or will.
> Do you think a “failing empire” or Rome 2.0 or whatever your favorite historical analogy is
> could have executed such a quick and skillful strategy to parry, weaken, and ultimately
> defeat one of its biggest rivals?
Rome did exactly this at the same time the Republic was falling apart. The Mithridatic Wars from 89 to 63 BC defeated a skilled and effective antagonist in Mithridates, but Rome was in pretty bad shape at the time. There had been a literal civil war just the year before, the political system was polarized to the point of dysfunction, and the preexisting long slide into autocracy didn't stop.
I think the smart Roman analogy for modern America is not the late empire but the late republic -- sharply polarized, huge class divisions, saddled with a completely broken political system, but with great underlying strength.
For an individual perspective, it is more useful to look a real median HH income than looking at overall GDP. HH income has been pretty much flat since at the mid 80s. It's gone up 3% since 1989.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=mYUr
GDP overall is good for looking at the strength of the economy (and the nation!) but median income is better for looking at the quality of life of the citizens. A stagnant quality of life is going to cause general pessimism, especially when combined with increasing inequality. It's not surprising that individual Americans are negative.
I am really puzzled by the "Wage Growth Tracker" graph as it indicates that the 4th quintile has had higher income growth than the 1st quintile since 1998 and that doesn't seem right to me.
America is not "collapsing" I agree. But we are in relative decline and American hegemony is in decline. The recent Ukrainian events notwithstanding, we are in a gradual, probably inevitable situation where our economy will be a smaller percentage of total global GDP. And that's a good thing! Global poverty has been going down. China is still on track to overtake the United States as the world's largest economy in the next decade or so and India is growing fast.
We are transitioning to an economy that requires less fossil fuels but not very quickly and that puts us in competition with other economies that increasingly can afford to pay for oil. China will soon overtake the United States as the world's largest consumer of oil. These are long term secular trends that won't go away anytime soon.
People are particularly gloomy right now, especially as most Americans are seeing their actual standards of living go down right now due to high inflation and moderate wage growth. The top 70% of wage earners at least. And all the other factors Noah mentioned.
I am a glass if half full kind of guy and I appreciate the optimism, but it has to be tempered with some clear eyed consideration of where we are now and where global trends will take us.
I don’t find as much hope as some here. With the pretty much even split in every issue, and both sides saying they wouldn’t mind the other seceding those isn’t much Union in our Union these days. And both sides of the duopoly are still working for their rich contributors instead of their voters.
I’d just add that excessive doomerism also carelessly legitimizes bad narratives.
For every leftist who buys “Rome 2.0”, there’s at least one lunkhead Roganite out there who’s making that same old dumb connection between Obergefell and Gibbon’s claim about homosexuality killing Rome, all because Joe Rogan Does His Own Research.
Now they've seen it can be done. Next time they'll be more prepared, and the next Trump won't be such a moron. Hard to feel super confident in the face of that. Although if they can sit on the Senate / SCOTUS / electoral college, an insurrection may not be necessary. I don't know if that's doomerism, but I am alarmed. I'm also concerned for the people of the nation more than the nation itself.
It just doesn't *feel* like the Democrats are up to the defense of democracy.
Good read, Noah. Society has been morbidly obsessed with the Apocalypse, in one form or another, my entire life. When we are not reaching for a WWII analogy, then we are on our soap boxes prophesizing the end of the world. People need to chill out and enjoy what will be recognized as the calm before the coming storm, assuming that Republicans sweep to power in 2024. Change will follow hard on its heels. That the country won't collapse is about all I'm willing to predict. Well, that and years of strong emotions and raw nerves.
It's always good to read some sanity between the endless doom posted by extremists on both sides. America has been through worse and come out fine.
"But now we have Twitter, so this rhetoric gets blasted out to millions of eyeballs and every journalist and politician in the land, while being amplified by every 13-year-old troll and foreign info-op account."
Serious people don't use Twitter. Personally, I only see it in columns where someone has inserted the Tweet. It has no bearing at all on what I think about issues. If everyone would take a month's vacation from Twitter. To paraphrase the great Jackie DeShannon song,
"Think of your fellow man
Twitter's not a helping hand
Put a little love in your heart
You see it's getting late"
How does this even get published? One of the stupidest essays ever written. "Yes, violent crime is up or inflation is up or American power is down, but it's not as bad as the all-time worst. America is not collapsing." What the left counts as genius couldn't build a lawn-mower.
From the article:
"From the end of the Civil War through the mid-1930s, SCOTUS upheld segregation and enforced laissez-faire economic doctrine. We will get through this era just fine."
That's a period of 70 years. Hurray! Maybe when I'm dead and buried, my great-grandchildren might be able to see an unfucked Supreme Court.
Noah,
Thank you for the engaging read. I think much of the doom-mongering stems from a person’s sense of perspective. In each of the cases cited, perspective greatly affects a person’s interpretation of events.
If you are a major supporter of the Roe v. Wade decision then the forthcoming Dobbs decision appears to be a crisis. However, if you have opposed Roe then the pending changes are a triumph. I personally oppose abortion on moral grounds and am pleased that the matter is transitioning from a judicial concern to a political one. The Dobbs decision does not undermine democracy but rather pushes the question of abortion to the States to be resolved as a political issue. The courts cannot mediate conflicting moral frameworks—that is a political task.
Regarding Afghanistan, I think you have under-emphasized a few things. After 2015 it was not really a military occupation by the USA and allies. A single aircraft carrier strike group has more military personnel than the US had in Afghanistan in the post-ISAF period. For all the flaws of the GIROA, it was still the democratically elected government of that country and it was adamant that the Resolute Support mission continue. By the time of the Doha Accords the Afghan conflict would best be characterized as a civil war with the US supporting the elected government against the rebels (Taliban, ISIS-K, etc…). The ANDSF conducted most of the fighting with Allied nations providing military enablers, training and advice. What shocked the world in 2021 was that the US essentially walked away from a sustainable situation (for America) that had broad international support. Now that the GIROA has collapsed and Afghanistan faces a severe famine, much of America has responded with a collective “meh”—as though its ally of 20 years means nothing to it.
If America were so willing to abandon a 20-year military partnership with the GIROA, would it do the same with Taiwan or Ukraine? An interesting question is whether Biden’s actions in Afghanistan factored into Putin’s calculus for invading Ukraine. How far will America go to press its interests? that question appears unresolved.
I do find it incredibly bizarre to criticize the (assumed) Dobbs opinion as "undemocratic". It is literally taking away a judicial restraint on democratically making laws. There are so many ways to criticize this opinion, that this is the one getting harped on is pretty revealing of how "democracy is falling apart" is seemingly the reaction to every perceived bad thing that happens. (And no, not the first time the court has backtracked on a right: remember "liberty of contract"?)