{"id":255,"date":"2026-07-06T15:40:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T15:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=255"},"modified":"2026-07-06T15:40:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T15:40:42","slug":"america-at-250-an-idealist-without-illusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=255","title":{"rendered":"America at 250: An Idealist Without Illusions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I sat on the curb the morning of July 4th, watching a parade in a suburb outside Chicago, where my wife and I were visiting her mother. My thoughts turned to the Bicentennial, which only about a quarter of today\u2019s Americans are old enough to remember. I was 18 then\u201468 now\u2014and even the best of AI medicine won\u2019t get me to the 2076 Tricentennial alive.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Election Subversion Plans?<\/a><\/p>\n

My first thought was how much worse off we are than in the summer of 1976, when genial Jerry Ford was in the White House, and Jimmy Breslin wrote a post-Watergate book called\u00a0How the Good Guys Finally Won.\u00a0<\/em>I focused for a moment on the \u201cfinally.\u201d This time, I\u2019m afraid that even if the Trump nightmare ends, we\u2019ll have the delay implicit in \u201cfinally\u201d without the finality and satisfaction of the accountability we achieved after Nixon resigned half a century ago.<\/p>\n

It was around 1976 that I defined my politics as John F. Kennedy once did: An idealist without illusions. Pragmatic and sensible for a teenager, no? Two years ago, I wrote a book called\u00a0American Reckoning,<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0in which I confessed that the specter of tens of millions of voters still supporting Donald Trump after January 6 convinced me that I had more illusions about the good sense of the American people than I had assumed. Trump\u2019s terrifying second term has only reinforced that cold realization. And if he successfully steals the midterms,\u00a0it\u2019s curtains for American democracy.<\/p>\n

And yet I felt strangely hopeful on the curb today, as the firetrucks and cheerleaders and Boy Scouts and Uncle Sam on stilts moved past me. I waved my little American flag with genuine patriotism and faith in our civic religion.<\/p>\n

Why? Why do I feel that way when we have a demented president, a corrupted Supreme Court, and a Republican Party and corporate class full of craven knee-benders who have failed the character test of their generation?<\/p>\n

The answer is not just that this is a resilient country that has overcome worse (if different) crises in the past. It\u2019s that a rational assessment\u2014one without illusions\u2014of the last 50 years since I watched the fireworks over Chicago\u2019s Navy Pier must yield to a recognition of how far this country has come. (For a sense of how the country changed between big 4th of July anniversaries, see\u00a0The Flag Was Still There<\/em>, by David McKean and M. Todd Bennett.)<\/p>\n

Yes, we have yawning wealth inequality, stagnating wages, soaring housing and medical costs, fewer pensions, and a dire climate threat. Americans seem meaner, greedier, and smaller in spirit. Drug overdose deaths are up 20-fold since 1976, and Americans of all ages suffer from anxieties worsened by screen time. The collapse of the journalism business model has jeopardized the local news we all depend on in a democracy and\u2014along with AI and social media\u2014hastened a retreat from the sovereignty of facts.<\/p>\n

But a\u00a0half-empty glass is also half full, and the latter, with some exceptions, is rarely noted. So let\u2019s celebrate our 250th with a little good news.<\/p>\n

Read more A Narrowing Vision of America<\/a><\/p>\n

We\u2019re still here, aren\u2019t we? Life expectancy is up an impressive 6.5 years over the last half century, to a record 79 years. That\u2019s mostly because heart disease deaths are down by nearly 60 percent (!) and cancer deaths by more than a third. If I\u2019d gotten Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in 1976 instead of 2004, I\u2019d be dead.<\/p>\n

In 1976, kids raised on candy cigarettes could get real ones from vending machines. Tobacco companies had their way in Washington. No more. This helps explain why lung cancer in men is down by more than 40 percent. Air pollution has been dramatically reduced\u2014my kids have barely heard of smog\u2014and water pollution in the U.S. (ocean dumping is another matter) is hard to get away with, even with a Trumpist EPA opposed to the agency\u2019s mission. In 1972, my sister was rushed to a hospital after falling out of a canoe into the Chicago River; today, people are celebrating the 4th by swimming in it. Half a century ago, car seats and airbags were rare. Now, with design changes, car crash fatalities have been cut in half.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Chicago, I was mugged twice and didn\u2019t dare venture into many neighborhoods. Subways across the country were graffiti-ridden and perilous, especially at night. Crime remains a problem in too many cities, but the murder rate has decreased by more than 50 percent over the past 50 years.<\/p>\n

As for our material lives, unemployment, inflation, and interest rates are lower than in 1976, and tens of millions more Americans are sharing in the stock market gains. Home ownership rates are unchanged, and we\u2019re living in much bigger houses. We go out to eat much more and have entertainment options that were unimaginable when I was 18.<\/p>\n

If so many things are better, why do we feel worse? The short answer is that even two working parents often can\u2019t make enough to get ahead. And it\u2019s much harder for a household to \u201ctighten its belt\u201d as our parents did in choppy waters. While the cost of \u201cstuff\u201d (food, clothing, appliances) has plummeted, the cost of services \u2014 especially health care, housing, and education \u2014 has skyrocketed. With wage growth flat, that creates a structural burden that didn\u2019t exist for mom and dad.<\/p>\n

If the Democrats regain power, strategies for easing these structural burdens on what everyone now calls \u201cworking families\u201d will move to the center of the political debate. So will the related challenge of AI. That\u2019s a good thing. With any luck, these concerns\u2014not Trump\u2014will be seen by the historians of 2076 as the big stories of our time. Now that would be something to celebrate.<\/p>\n

Read more Independence Day, From Jefferson to Reagan to Trump<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years after the Bicentennial, American democracy is imperiled\u2014but the country\u2019s progress since 1976 offers real reasons for hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,18,2,3],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-care","category-law-and-justice","category-politics","category-the-monopolized-economy","tag-tagged-ai-american-democracy-bicentennial-crime-donald-trump-fourth-of-july-inequality-life-expectancy-patriotism-tricentennial-working-fam"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica at 250: An Idealist Without Illusions - USA Business Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=255\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"America at 250: An Idealist Without Illusions - 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