If news reports from the United States of America are to be believed on this 250th anniversary of my country’s birth, then everything about the place is awful.
The US is reported to have a bad president and a do-nothing Congress, the latest in a long line of bad presidents and do-nothing Congresses.
Reports also tell us the president has piled tariffs on all of the other “loser” countries in the world, and one island populated entirely by penguins – who have been recorded preparing for an armed trade war.
But wait. Breaking news tells us the Supreme Court struck down those tariffs. One justice allegedly urged the president’s supporters, “Don’t be sad”. The penguins are reported to be standing down.
Violence in America is reported to be off the charts, especially violence involving bare arms, which enjoys constitutional protection. People are even pummeling one another on the White House lawn.
Inequality is reported to be very offensive in America. The country has almost 1,000 billionaires and now even a trillionaire, who jokes about buying volcanic lairs.
The federal government of America is reported to be spending unfathomable amounts of money on God only knows what. The Federal Reserve of America is reported to be studying what comes after trillion.
Racism in America is reported to be everywhere. Absolutely everything from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to video game axolotls to automatic soap dispensers – everything! – stands accused of the vile stuff.
People who would defend those racist foods and video games creatures and hygiene products, especially in a measured way, are also reported to be racist. Antiracist experts are quoted as telling us this.
Many of the things that are reported to be racist are also reported to be anti-feminist and anti-gay and transphobic and islamophobic. They are sometimes reported to be fatphobic as well.
America’s pronouns are reported to be “Pew! Pew! Pew!” and “Earth-shattering kaboom!”
America’s military is reported to be very proud of those pronouns.
Cuisine in America is reported to be far too processed, unnatural, fattening and generally icky. Most Americans have not even developed a taste for snails, brains, crickets or frog legs.
American supermarkets are reported to be full of too much food.
Fireworks in America are reported to be too boomy.
Movies in America are reported to be too loud, long, sequely and other bad things. The popcorn buckets are reported to be far too deep.
Sports in America are reported to be wrong in various ways. Baseball is reported to be too long. Futbol is reportedly called “soccer”. Hockey was reported stolen by Canada. And reports tell us that American football has Roger Goodell as its commissioner. Boo that man!
Lawyers in America are reported to have too many ambulances to chase and too many congressional seats to run for.
Teachers in America are reported to be underpaid and overworked. They thoughtfully share those reports with other American workers all summer long.
Schoolchildren in America are reported to be fluent in emojis and the numbers six and seven. They are catching up on other subjects.
Religion in America is reported to be too evangelical and also too Catholic, and maybe too Jewish. Also, the pope is reported to be American, though Peru has asked for a correction.
Atheism in America is reported to be on the rise, though polls tell us many of those atheists also believe in a Higher Power. Tricky!
Speech in America is reported to be far too free. Folks can say or write practically anything without fear of the government swooping in and stopping the presses, even ridiculous reports like this one!
Pax Americana, While It Lasts
Yes, I am having a bit of fun. I cooked up this column as the Fourth of July approached. Today it is one of those important every-half-century Independence Days when government and civic institutions get out the good silverware.
Without serious medical advances, I likely shall not live to see the next one, but my two young children should. Maybe they will read this column and see it as the high water mark of an American rule that receded over their lifetimes. Or maybe they will be glad to be attached to an exceptional nation that shrugged off the weight of expectations and went from strength to strength.
Regardless, there has never been a nation like America, and there likely never will be again. It is a nation that was born in protest and matured to excess.
Americans are, at this point in time, rich beyond belief. We have so much money that we routinely blow thousands of dollars on things like pet surgery, destination weddings, SUVs and self-storage units to pack away all of our extra stuff that we cannot fit in our oversized homes.
Over the last 15 years, Americans have left the citizens of many peer countries in the dust. On this day, 250 years ago, American colonists declared independence from the mighty British empire. Now citizens of the UK are on balance poorer than the residents of America’s poorest state, Mississippi.
Many critics are trying to pin that relative decline on Brexit. Yet the same picture is broadly true of Americans’ position relative to most Europeans as well. This is, actually and metaphorically speaking, the summer of their under-air-conditioned discontent.
The American Story Is Worth Telling
Of course, not everything is going gangbusters in America. Many newspapers are shrinking or dying, for instance.
The news industry contraction is multi-causal. The morning paper used to deliver a lot more than news to subscribers. People got their horoscopes and games and comics and coupons that they could use at local stores. The internet has unbundled those things. This makes the whole package less valuable.
Yet some other historical print products such as books have staged a comeback. In fact, the digital form of books has arguably padded publishing profits rather than destroying them. So why are American newspapers faring so badly?
If I were to venture a guess for newspapers’ continued decline, it is because trust in the press has fallen off a cliff. Chalk this up to political polarization, but only in part. The funhouse mirrors image of America that I offered up in the first part of this column was based upon actual coverage of America in very self-serious news outlets, most of them domestic.
It is part of the press’s job to hold those in power to account. Pursuing that mission day in and day out will tend to put some distance between the journalists who closely scrutinize America’s market and government economies and the citizens who only intermittently pay attention.
That cultural distance has pushed the former default chroniclers of American life toward those protesters who do not think much of America. Thus it is often the protesters’ stories and their grudges that end up shaping larger journalistic narratives. That is one way to do it, and some scribblers still manage to pay the bills that way.
Yet there is another way to do journalism. Namely, tell the ongoing, bizarre, contradictory and confounding story of a nation and its sprawling and disputatious people. Warts and all, of course, but let us not mistake the warts for the face.
