So says conservative columnist and commentator David Brooks in The Atlantic.
But we don’t know it, he says, because “negativity is by now so deeply ingrained in American media culture that it’s become the default frame imposed on reality.”
"In large part, this is because since the dawn of the internet age, the surest way to build an audience is to write stories that make people terrified or furious,” he says.
"This permanent cloud of negativity has a powerful effect on how Americans see their country,” Brooks says. "When Gallup recently asked Americans if they were satisfied with their personal life, 85 percent said they were, a number that has remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years. But when Gallup asked Americans in January 2022 if they were satisfied with the direction of the country, only 17 percent said they were, down from 69 percent in 2000. In other words, there was a 68-percentage-point gap between the reality people directly experienced in their daily life and the reality they perceived through the media filter.”
"The first problem with all this pessimism is that it is ahistorical,” Brooks says. "Every era in American history has faced its own massive challenges, and in every era, the air has been thick with gloomy jeremiads warning of catastrophe and decline. Pick any decade in the history of this country, and you will find roiling turmoil. But in all of those same decades, you will also find, alongside the chaos and the prophecies of doom, energetic dynamism and leaping progress.
"The second problem with the decline narrative is that it distorts reality. My basic take is that life in America today is objectively better than it was before but subjectively worse. We have much higher standards of living and many conveniences, but when it comes to how we relate to one another — whether in the realm of politics, across social divides, or in the intimacies of family and community life — distrust is rife, bonds are fraying, and judgments are harsh.
“But that doesn’t mean the future isn’t going to be brighter than the present, or that America is in decline. The pessimists miss an underlying truth — a society can get a lot wrong as long as it gets the big thing right. And that big thing is this: If a society is good at unlocking creativity, at nurturing the abilities of its people, then its ills can be surmounted.”
Brooks presents lots of statistics on ways humanity in general and America in particular continue to unleash human creativity: in improved living standards, education, productivity, equality, life expectancy, innovation infrastructure, technology.
"I’ve bludgeoned you with statistics in order to make a point: Pessimism about our future is unwarranted,” Brooks says. "You may think that one major American political party has gone crazy, and I will agree with you. You can point to all of the ways in which life in America is infuriating and unjust, and I will agree with you there too. But the story of America is a story of convulsion and reinvention. We go through moments when the established order stops working. People and movements rise up, and things change. The culture is a collective response to the problems of the moment; as new problems become obvious, the culture shifts. We’ve been in the middle of one of those tumultuous transition periods since, I’d say, 2013. But 2022 evinced hopeful signs that we’re coming out of it.
"If there is one lesson from the events of the past year, it is that open societies such as ours have an ability to adapt in a way that closed societies simply do not. Russia has turned violent and malevolent. China has grown more authoritarian and inept. Meanwhile, free democratic societies have united around the Ukrainians as they battle to preserve the liberal world order. And American voters seem to finally be adapting to the threat Donald Trump poses to our democracy, forming a robust anti-Trump coalition that will significantly lessen his chances of ever working in the White House again.
"America is a wounded giant, and many of its wounds are self-inflicted. But America has always been a wounded giant. And it has always stumbled forward, driven by an inner turbine of ambition and aspiration that knows no rest."