"Bret Stephens: Gail, happy almost Independence Day. In the spirit of the holiday: Is America toast?

Gail Collins: Well, gee, Bret, happy almost Independence Day back. Hope you’re not planning to celebrate by, um, shooting things off.

Bret: Only my mouth. As usual.

Gail: Seriously, please elaborate. If you’re thinking of the Supreme Court, I’m happy to join in any hand-wringing. But somehow I suspect you’ve got a different vision of doom.

Bret: It won’t surprise you that I’ve been pretty happy with the court’s rulings this term, which I’m sure we’ll get to in a moment. But what I mean is the brokenness of almost every institution I can think of, a thought I’m borrowing from Alana Newhouse, the editor of Tablet magazine. Congress: broken. Public education: broken. The I.R.S.: broken. The Roman Catholic Church: broken. The immigration system: broken. Cities: broken. Civil discourse: broken. Families: broken. Race relations: broken.

And the most broken thing of all: public trust. Trust in government, in news media, in police, in the scientific establishment. There’s a ton of scholarly research showing that when societies become low-trust, like in Lebanon or Brazil, they tend to fare poorly.

Gail: I know that many very smart people are in the throes of despair, but I just can’t get there. People have been complaining about the schools since the beginning of time — and that’s a good thing; you certainly don’t want to be complacent about education.

Bret: Did you know that The Times won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1944 for reporting on how shockingly ignorant American college freshmen were about U.S. history? And them wuz the good ol’ days."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/opinion/biden-trump-supreme-court.html

Of course, the question is whether "Not America's Unhappiest Birthday" means America will get better soon enough or the worst is yet to come.

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On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 12:13:27 PM UTC-4, ltlee1 wrote:
> "Bret Stephens: Gail, happy almost Independence Day. In the spirit of the holiday: Is America toast?
>
> Gail Collins: Well, gee, Bret, happy almost Independence Day back. Hope you’re not planning to celebrate by, um, shooting things off.
>
> Bret: Only my mouth. As usual.
>
> Gail: Seriously, please elaborate. If you’re thinking of the Supreme Court, I’m happy to join in any hand-wringing. But somehow I suspect you’ve got a different vision of doom.
>
> Bret: It won’t surprise you that I’ve been pretty happy with the court’s rulings this term, which I’m sure we’ll get to in a moment. But what I mean is the brokenness of almost every institution I can think of, a thought I’m borrowing from Alana Newhouse, the editor of Tablet magazine. Congress: broken. Public education: broken. The I.R.S.: broken. The Roman Catholic Church: broken. The immigration system: broken. Cities: broken. Civil discourse: broken. Families: broken. Race relations: broken.
>
> And the most broken thing of all: public trust. Trust in government, in news media, in police, in the scientific establishment. There’s a ton of scholarly research showing that when societies become low-trust, like in Lebanon or Brazil, they tend to fare poorly.
>
> Gail: I know that many very smart people are in the throes of despair, but I just can’t get there. People have been complaining about the schools since the beginning of time — and that’s a good thing; you certainly don’t want to be complacent about education.
>
> Bret: Did you know that The Times won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1944 for reporting on how shockingly ignorant American college freshmen were about U.S. history? And them wuz the good ol’ days."
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/opinion/biden-trump-supreme-court.html
>
> Of course, the question is whether "Not America's Unhappiest Birthday" means America will get better soon enough or the worst is yet to come.

Unhappiness is also clear from the polls:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/06/gallup-show-declining-confidence-in-institutions/

"As the Declaration of Independence tells it, Britain’s King George III, having committed a “long train of abuses and usurpations,”
forfeited “the consent of the governed,” and with it, his right to rule the 13 colonies.
....
Two hundred and forty-seven years later, public opinion data abounds. And it suggests that the contemporary United States is
going through a loss of legitimacy no less challenging, in its way, than the one that ultimately engulfed George III. As this country
wrapped up its birthday party on July 4, polls were confirming a continued, and, in some respects, increasing, lack of public
confidence in its political, economic and social institutions.

The share of the public that expresses a “great deal,” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the presidency (26 percent), Congress (8 percent)
and the Supreme Court (27 percent) ticked up slightly since 2022 but still registers at or near all-time lows, according to a new Gallup
survey released Thursday.

The percentage expressing confidence in the presidency midway through President Biden’s first term represents a surprising decline
from the level — mid-to-high 30s — that prevailed during Donald Trump’s tumultuous, polarizing White House tenure. Congress is down
from 30 percent in 2004 and 42 percent a half-century ago; the Supreme Court’s percentage is 20 points lower than it was two decades ago.

Truly stunning are the downward trends for institutions that traditionally enjoy substantial public esteem. The percentage expressing a
“great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the U.S. military has dropped 14 points since 2018, from 74 percent to 60 percent — the latter
being a new low for the 21st century.

Only 43 percent express strong confidence in the police, down 21 percentage points from the all-time Gallup high of 64 percent in 2004 —
and the lowest in the 30 years since Gallup began asking the question. Over the past half-century, confidence in public schools has plunged
36 points; it now stands at 26 percent, also an all-time low for Gallup.

The print and electronic media, once broadly trusted to hold other institutions accountable, now rank close to the bottom in Gallup’s
confidence surveys. In a Reuters-Ipsos poll released in June, 73 percent of respondents agreed that “the mainstream media is more
interested in making money than telling the truth.”

In a different survey last year, 69 percent of Americans told Gallup they do not have confidence in their national government, the worst
rating of any country in the Group of Seven advanced industrial democracies..

Consistent with the above, the Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 69 percent of Americans think the economy is “rigged to advantage the rich and
powerful,” 64 percent believe “traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like [you],” and 61 percent agree with the statement
“America needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful.”"