The Summer of Our Discontent

Maybe the U.S. men’s soccer team will cheer up their fellow Americans by advancing Wednesday in the World Cup. Perhaps our national malaise will lift when the Iran war ends, gasoline prices drop, and Americans can get back to enjoying swimming pools and summer vacations.

Or not.

An in-depth survey by the Pew Research Center painstakingly documents what has become undeniable. The report’s title says it succinctly: “On the Country’s 250th Anniversary, the American People Are in a Sour Mood.”

The preamble to the Declaration of Independence – the historical peg for the nation’s 250th celebration – starts with the famous formulation. It’s a self-evident truth, the Founders proclaimed, that all human beings are endowed at birth with certain unalienable rights. (That modifier was Ben Franklin’s suggestion, “self-evident” replacing Thomas Jefferson’s formulation of “sacred and undeniable” truths.)

But if the Creator gave us the right to pursue happiness, one supposes that the corollary is that we also have a right to continually kvetch about our lives and fret about the future. And to complain constantly about our misguided neighbors – you know, those accursed Republicans (or Democrats) – along with whatever hapless wretch happens to occupy the White House. Complaining about the president of the United States, and the direction of the country, has become as American as apple pie.

And that’s where we return to the latest Pew poll.

Two key themes emerge from this survey. The first is that much of this national malaise and mutual distrust is driven by partisanship. One example that best illustrates the distorting effects of political polarization came in answer to a question of how Americans feel about their country. Asked how we were doing in the country in 2022 (when Joe Biden was president), only 10% of Republicans said pronounced themselves “satisfied” with the direction of the country. Today, that number is 54%. By contrast, 29% of Democrats were satisfied in 2022, compared to only 8% today. Donald Trump, in other words, is worse for the country in Democrats’ minds than COVID-19, which claimed nearly 1 million American lives.

The point is that Democratic and Republican party “leaders” aren’t the only issue here: These hyper-partisan attitudes rise out of the grassroots among rank-and-file voters. And it’s a dynamic that may not change anytime soon – as younger voters are particularly glum about America’s prospects.

“When asked to look ahead to what things might be like in the year 2050, the youngest U.S. adults express more pessimistic views than the country’s older adults do,” the report said.

Other key findings include:

• Americans are less impressed with how well their democracy is working than the citizenry of other Western countries.

• We also have doubts about whether our fellow Americans have high moral character.

• By a bracing margin (59%-40%), respondents to the Pew poll expressed the view that America’s best days were behind us.

• Another finding that explains some of this negativity is that Americans have increasingly lost faith in the nation’s major institutions. The federal government and both major political parties, of course, but also the media and the nation’s seeds of higher learning have also taken a hit.

“And when asked to look ahead to 2050,” the Pew poll reported, “upward of half of U.S. adults say they think the economy will be weaker, the U.S. will be less important in the world, the country will be more politically divided, and the American system of government will work worse than it does today.”

But this close to July 4, Pew’s experts wanted to leave us with something positive – and they managed to do it.

A majority of the survey’s respondents admitted they feel “hopeful” when thinking about the future. In other words, our gluttonous government, preening politicians, partisan press, and execrable educators can’t overcome Americans’ innate desire to be optimistic.

Fully 54% of Americans say they feel “happy” when thinking of the days ahead. Our pursuit of happiness remains undaunted – and that’s a phrase, of course, that Franklin let Jefferson keep in the final draft.