Positives from the Past Decade?

Steve Chapman, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, cited my book in a 12/27 column entitled "Remember the good things that happened in America in the past decade."  He used a quotation from The End of the American Century, published in 2009, to compare the end of the present decade to the end of the previous one.

He recognizes the many problems we still face, not least of them due to the "poisonous presidency" of Donald Trump, but points to the many good things that have happened in the ten years since my book was published.  Among these are the continued growth of the U.S. economy; the scaling back of US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan; the expansion of LGBTQ rights; and the Obama accomplishments on childhood immigrants; health care; and torture.

What most resonates in Chapman's argument, though, is this:

Trump has done immeasurable harm on all sorts of matters. But he has also created a powerful backlash that has manifested itself in annual women’s marches, renewed awareness of the persistence of racism, and public support for modest gun regulations, climate change legislation, immigration reform, the Affordable Care Act — and his impeachment.

Ironically, then, the main contribution of the Trump presidency to this past decade is to generate resistance to the very awfulness of it. This upsurge in political involvement is indeed a positive development, especially if it can persist through the removal of this insidious president.

But this positive growth of political participation is offset by Trump's persistent efforts to undermine democratic institutions and procedures.  He has pushed to restrict the franchise in many states; manipulated and threatened our independent judiciary and legal processes; badgered and threatened his political opponents; eviscerated the governmental institutions that might provide a check on his abuse of power;  and has solicited foreign interference in the U.S. electoral process.  He expresses admiration for foreign dictators as brutal and ruthless as those we have fought against in the past.

 In chapter 5 of my book ("Ailing of American Democracy"), I document the increasing apathy, indifference and political ignorance of the American electorate, and the growing influence of money in politics.  I raise the possibility of the U.S. "becoming like our enemies."  Trump is leading us in that direction.

While I appreciate Chapman's efforts to see the bright side of the last ten years, I think it would be a mistake to underestimate just how much Trump has revived the downward spiral of the U.S. that I documented in The End of the American Century.  Middle class wages have barely budged since the 1970s.  Inequality, already high ten years ago, has rocketed upward since then.  We have not yet solved the problems of expensive health care and violent crime--both unique to the U.S. among developed countries.  Our educational system is among the worst among rich countries.  No president, even George W. Bush, has undermined science as much as the current one, even as the existential threat of climate change becomes more obvious by the day. Global opinion of the U.S. is even lower than it was under Bush, which then was at a postwar nadir.  And no president in history has so deliberately attempted to hollow out our governmental institutions and undermine our democratic principles and processes.