Is American Decline Inevitable?
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The broad topic of the conversation was decline. We don’t always know how to express it, but many of us feel it: There’s something wrong with America today. The mood is tense. More Americans say they won’t have children because of climate change and other future catastrophes. But are things really as bad as they seem? Is decline something we need to accept—or is there a case for a new optimism?
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Is American Decline Inevitable?
Quite late to listening to this lively discussion and commenting but had to chime in. First, congrats to you and the team for getting Wisdom of Crowds at Aspen. You’re on a fast-paced trajectory of getting your ideas out there. Truly fantastic.
I must quibble with you one one part of your opening premise Shadi because I think you pulled off a subtle bit of jujitsu. You cited a stat that says that more young people on the left say they aren’t proud of America than on the right. But then you conflated that with an assertion that more people on the left think America is on the decline. And then you used that to jump to a left doomerism narrative rooted in climate worries, tied to decisions about not having kids, and you used that to criticize your own team for being so gloomy. I’ll get to the second half in a moment but let me take the first half, first.
I call conflation on your conflation. The reasons the left is less proud of America than the the right - as someone in the audience kind of alluded to - is the perpetual feeling that America is not living up to its promise (esp. given recent SCOTUS decisions), which is still for many on the left rooted in a type of patriotism (rather than disgust, which is a factor, don’t get me wrong, but I think breeds turning away), while the right is for certain reasons more susceptible to pride in country stemming from a patriotism that runs into jingoism.
The question of decline is totally different. The left is down on America because they think it hasn’t gone “up” enough yet while it’s the right that is constantly concerned with American decline. Like, make American great “again”? Restore our values and culture and country? The entire narrative is that the US has fallen off and needs to recover.
On the climate crisis and the birth rate, I don’t think I understand your dismissiveness. First, you don’t have kids so I’m not sure why you judge the reasons that other people don’t have kids or have fewer kids than before. But second, I don’t know why you would judge people for worrying about the future of their kids on the planet. I don’t think you’re a climate denier. It’s true that remarkable progress is being made on renewables. So it shouldn’t be all doom and gloom. It’s also true that weather isn’t climate, so citing this summer’s fires and heats and storms and floods can lead to logical conflation. But look around the globe - climate migration is happening, people are making desperate choices because of the climate, water, food supply. If you’re a young person thinking seriously about marriage and kids, why would you not give some consideration to those hypothetical kids’ future quality of life?
Also, I know the US birth rate has fallen and I know that you have the anecdotes about younger people on the left saying they have climate-connected concerns about having kids but it seems a jump to attribute the falling birth rate to those concerns. There are plenty of other economic concerns at play that influence decisions about having kids, plus there was that little issue of the pandemic upending a lot of life plans.
I think there’s a kind of love for one’s country that can lead a person to cheer for their country’s decline. Whether you think the country’s already fallen from its golden age, or is failing repeatedly to meet its potential, it’s very tempting to say: “you disappoint me, now you deserve to suffer.” I feel myself pulled in both those directions, as well as a third that’s more optimistic about America.