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VOTE: Will America Be Better Off In 25 Years? [1]
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Date: 2022-12-16
William Cooper is the author of Stress Test: How Donald Trump Threatens American Democracy.
VOTE: Will America Be Better Off In 25 Years?
A simple truism looms over humanity: The more people who have the capacity to cause large-scale harm, the more likely such a scenario is to happen.
Technological innovation is, indeed, creating profound new complexities. Every day humans discover new ways to disrupt natural habitats, engineer deadly pharmaceuticals, spread new viruses, warp adolescent psychologies, exploit vulnerable consumers, violate privacy rights, and hack sensitive computer networks. While human inventiveness has prolonged and enhanced billions of lives, it has also created breathtaking unforeseen challenges.
A key question for our time, then, is this: How skillful will governments be at protecting humans from the fruits of their own ingenuity? The United States is a leading indicator—and the trend lines are deeply concerning.
First, a growing percentage of the American people are becoming more irrational. These Americans are abandoning facts, data—and even elemental principles of cause and effect—in favor of tribal fantasies and abhorrent stupidities. Most Donald Trump supporters believe that the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election. Most Republicans stand firmly against even rudimentary measures to address climate change. Millions of Americans believe leading vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they protect against. And fanatics on the left and right think that America’s core governmental institutions should be torn down and rebuilt in line with their visceral instincts about how the world should work. The more this nonsense gains traction, the more the fabric of American democracy frays.
Second, American government is becoming more dysfunctional. Our longstanding national ethos rooted in reason and prudence is being outgunned by tribal resentment and bitter anger. Donald Trump is still the Republicans’ champion, despite trying to overthrow a presidential election. Seething partisanship on both sides of the aisle is only getting worse. And enormous policy failures—relating to the environment, mass incarceration, public education, distorted electoral maps, opioid overdoses, and economic inequality—all trend in the wrong direction. America’s standing as history's preeminent constitutional democracy is teetering on the ragged edge of extinction.
And third, the rest of the world is becoming more complicated. Exponentially so. China has matured into America’s international rival. Russia has maintained two features of the Soviet Empire: thuggish instincts and vast weaponry. Authoritarianism and extremism still cast dark and bloody shadows in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. And a rise of populism has destabilized dozens of nations, most of whom are steadily increasing their military capabilities. America’s post-cold war global dominance took two hundred years to achieve and a mere two decades to vanish.
The combination of these three things results in much more than the sum of its parts suggests. If humanity’s ability to govern itself continues to atrophy at the same time as its ability to harm itself increases, then eventually there will be a fracture. Even if something has a one percent chance of happening annually, it will, eventually, happen.
Earth’s population will soon exceed 8 billion people. The pace at which humanity innovates will only accelerate—bringing most people a higher quality of life but also, at the same time, a broader set of risks. America was long a global example of how to confront and solve the world’s hardest problems. It is fast becoming one of those problems itself.
Yet the world continues to depend on America to uphold the rules-based international order, anchor the global economy, deter military aggression, and reinforce the value of democratic self-governance. America’s backsliding doesn't just undermine domestic tranquility. It destabilizes the delicate balance of power among all nations. America must become, once again, an effective global leader.
The potential is there. While battered and bruised, America’s core governmental institutions remain strong compared to those of most other nations. America’s economy is still large and vibrant. Its universities are still the envy of the world. Its citizenry and press still speak freely. Its courts still operate largely free from corruption. And its people have more underlying talent and skill than ever before.
What America needs is as simple to prescribe as it is hard to administer: a heavy dose of rationality. The American people and their elected representatives must see zero-sum tribal warfare for what it is—a dangerous poison to the entire body politic—and return to politics rooted in disciplined empirical analysis, hard-earned compromise, and, on the biggest issues of the day, national unity. Political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville said long ago that the “greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” We are putting this thesis to its ultimate test—and will find out, soon enough, whether or not it’s still true.
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