The Best of Times, The Worst Of Times

The Best Of Times

There are things about living today that are the best that they have ever been.

For example, one of the things I dreamed about when I was in high school was being able to experience pop culture from all over the world. Now, with streaming services like Spotify, Netflix and Hulu, with art house theaters (which didn't exist in my small town childhood), and with book stores that have more cosmopolitan offerings, at least to some degree, this is possible.

Likewise, the culinary delights of almost any place in the world is just around the corner, who a huge variety of grocery and restaurant choices.

Moveable goods are cheap. Products like 3D printers, computers, GPS and smart phones make possible things we could barely even have imagined.

Cars are safer and last longer and are more fuel efficient and less polluting, and speed limits are higher, We are on the brink of transitioning from gasoline and diesel powered motor vehicles to self-driving electric vehicles. Active efforts are underway to restore supersonic passenger flight. Renewable energy technologies have crossed key thresholds. High speed trains are an effective mode of transportation in Europe, Japan, China and the Northwestern United States.

Teen pregnancies and crime rates are near long time lows for the United States. The average American is more educated than ever and racial disparities in education are less than they were. Gay rights are near a high water mark. The nation is more non-religious and less Christian than it has been since the Enlightenment. The #MeToo movement has brought accountability to sexual abusers in many positions of power (although not the President yet), and the Roman Catholic church under one of its best Popes in decades is cleaning up its own house.

The mindless march towards higher incarceration rates has finally ebbed. Marijuana legalization has probably crossed a point of no return.

We know everything there is to know about fundamental physics that has engineering applications even if we haven't scraped out every last secret that Nature has to offer and sometimes don't know how to apply what it is that we do know. We remain hot in pursuit of more knowledge on this front.

We haven't had a draft since Vietnam and many other countries in the developed world have followed suit. We aren't exactly at peace, but we are not fighting a major war either. Precision munitions and drones have dramatically changed warfare to the point were knowing where to strike is a bigger problem than being able to do so. The Islamic terrorism threat that was at the forefront in the U.S. after 9-11 has largely failed to materialize in the U.S.

We have developed new vaccines like HPV, are making serious progress on an HIV vaccine, can cure near sightedness with lasers, have made real progress in reducing trauma mortality, and may have discovered a cure for most sepsis cases. Again, efforts towards further medical advances are vigorous.

The Worst Of Times

Not all of the news is good, however, and the United States feels to many on both the left and the right like an empire in decline.

Opioid deaths have been surging. So has cirrhosis of the liver caused by alcohol abuse. We are growing obese as our traditions are not long sufficient to keep us well exercised with a healthy diet to match our lifestyles.

Our President is a delusional idiot and about a third of American voters, disproportionately older, white, male, rural and Southern, back him. We are taking steps backwards as he leads us towards a more racist, more xenophobic, more protectionist, more misogynist, more homophobic, more anti-Semitic, more anti-Muslim, more cruel and more hateful world. Nazi and white supremacist politics are resurgent in Europe and the United States.

His movement has disavowed the legitimate media, higher education, science, and the rule of law. They practice a Bizarro World Christianity that hates the poor and loves the rich, that hates the foreigner and is stripped of compassion and mercy.

It is more dangerous to be LGBTQ. It is more dangerous to be black or a foreigner.

We have the most corrupt Presidential administration since Andrew Jackson, and senior staff positions full of people who want to undermine their agencies.

Mass shootings have sprung up at an unprecedented rate. Right wing terrorism is resurgent. Unjustified police violence that goes unsanctioned remains all too common and is encouraged by the President.

The United States has health care less universal than anywhere else in the world, at by far the highest cost in the world, with results that aren't the best by far. Huge tragedies like lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan and the failure to provide adequate relief to Puerto Rico after its most recent losing fight with a Hurricane remain without a remedy.

Since the 1970s, the working class has seen economic stagnation, has found it harder and harder to make marriages work, and has struggled to get by with more work, while education and health care costs, for example soaring. There has been economic growth, but only confined to the upper middle class and far more than that to the 1%.

U.S. international goodwill is gone and so is our commitment to human rights, and we have failed to intervene constructively in miserable wars in places like Yemen and Syria.

Our K-12 education has declined even as our universities remain national leaders.

Despite progress on renewables and green technologies, the administration is working hard to undermine environmental standards, to encourage more pollution, to deny that man made climate change is real, against the entire world.

The democratic institutions of the United States are deeply troubled. Republicans are actively working on voter suppression. The electoral college and gerrymandering are systemically biased against urban and liberal voters. Russians interfered with out most recent election and many Republicans think it was good thing. Lobbies for anti-social big business interests and the NRA remain absurdly powerful. Third-parties voters hurt their friends and are manipulated nefariously. Republicans have abused legislative norms in Congress while Democrats have not responded in kind and have been taken advantage of in the process. The U.S. Supreme Court is shifting left as a result of a variety of dirty tricks. We have no way to swiftly remove a madman like Trump. Media giants like major urban newspapers are in decline, and more than a third of voters ignore them anyway drawn in by misleading partisan journalism and fake news from Fox and less reputable less well known sources. Social media is vulnerable to demagogues. Political party elites couldn't contain a baser rank and file.

It is infuriating that we know what the problems are, we know who in the administration is dirty, we know the President's deep, deep faults and yet, nothing seems to happen.

The left has mobilized and might get things on the right track again in the mid-term elections in two months, or they could have another stunning and unexpected failure like 2016. All hope is not lost, but right now the future looks like a dark one. We need an unprecedented Blue Tsunami, and that may or may not happen.

There is no vision for a way forward.