Is Something Rotten in America?

This post grew out of my reaction to a recent book titled Why We Hate Us, by the American writer Dick Meyer, a career-journalist. Meyer published a magazine article, ahead of publication, in order to gain some advance-publicity for it. The article, titled "THERE'S SOMETHING ROTTEN in the State of America," draws from a quote in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. As the title-character Prince Hamlet broods over the murder of his father, a guard says famously, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

If my reader cares to, he can find other articles on social media that use this quote to go into detail about how rotten America is. Meyer starts his rant in the very first line and continues from there.
Here are a few quotes from the article:

  1. It is something phony, belligerent, and toxic in the culture.
  2. We keep electing partisan phonies we can't stand.
  3. We get furious at liberal bias and right-wing slant.
  4. Americans are down on America.
  5. We're often aware of this social self-loathing.
  6. We are repelled by the polluted social environment.

I don't agree with most of this. There's definitely some phoniness and belligerence in the culture, but no more than anywhere else on the planet. The same with "self-loathing". There's some of that, too, but the lack of inclusivity in the philosophies of the America's political parties causes most of the problem. They pull against each other, and it has partially disabled the nation's ability to move forward. So, political stasis should concern us most.

Meyer goes on to explain his own intentions:

  1. This book is not a political book.
  2. It isn't liberal or conservative.
  3. It avoids hot-button issues.

That's just disingenuous. The Wikipedia article on Meyer makes clear he is a liberal Democat.

He blames the discontent on the following:

  1. disorienting, rapid social change;
  2. moral, civic transformations that came after the sixties;
  3. disruptive, social fallout from the technological revolution;

Again, this doesn't tell us much. There is some angst over modern conveniences, although most of us like the modern stuff. The industrial infra-structure has evolved, or simply relocated abroad, and it presents some problem; but industrial evolution goes on sort of constantly. The immigrants still see opportunities here, better than we natives can. I mean, the immigrants keep coming. They even risk their lives to come here.

The article vexes me for its pretended lack of perception about the diverging views of Republicans and Democrats. On most major issues facing the country, they pull in opposite directions, as I have already said. In fact, if the politicians themselves did not condition us to a single country, we would have separated years ago. Forcing the electorate to stay as a single nation means that the political parties struggle against each other for a commanding position, using every trick in the book, rolling back the policy initiatives undertaken by the previous administration.

So far, people like Dick Meyer have deceived the voters about the differences, or the toll they take on the nation's fitness and preparedness. At the rate we're going, the deception can't last too much longer. Meyer has wasted a great opportunity to define and delineate the positions. He does little more than blame the differences on external factors that have little to do with anything. 

As an informed person, Meyer should understand better than most people the political differences, if he does not live in denial about them. The contrasting styles and platforms of  Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump made the '24 election more lively than recent ones.