Okay, so, throughout my entire life, I’ve heard again and again people pining for the “good old days”, complaining that we don’t have any jobs, and nothing is made in America anymore, gas prices are too high, and trying to blame the current “horrible” situation the country is in on whatever parties or Presidents they disagree with. I’ve heard this over and over again from different people no matter WHO is in power at the time, which should tell you something right there.
This is pure POPPYCOCK, under Biden, we are currently living in the best times that this country has ever seen. And before that? Under Trump? We were living in the best times we’d ever seen then too, at that time. And so on, and so on. The country has kept getting better EVERY year, no matter WHO was sitting in the Presidential spot.
Don’t believe me? Think that’s nonsense?
I can show you why in three simple charts.
Chart 1 (click for source) is the Gross Domestic Product of the United States from 1940 until 2022. Which is the amount of goods and services produced for sale by the country. Note how there’s only two “dips” in the entire chart – during the 2008 housing bubble bursting and causing a recession, and during COVID. HOWEVER, look at what happened then… we just shrugged and moved on, producing even MORE goods and services shortly thereafter. We consistently keep making more useful stuff and doing more useful things for people, year after year, consistently.
Next, chart #2 (click for source) shows from about 1963 to 2022 the Average Hourly Earnings “deflated by the CPI-U and the PCE” – which in short means that this chart shows what we earn, yanked downwards (or accounting for) inflation and our spending (i.e. the cost of living). I broke this chart down by party and presidential terms at the bottom. Notice something? The people in power have basically no affect on the direction of the chart whatsoever. It’s not as if it’s always going up whenever the Republicans or Democrats are in power, and it didn’t go down just because “that illegal Kenyan Obama” or “that freaking orange Cheeto Trump” got into power. Regardless of who was in the top seat, ever since our most recent “low” in the early-mid 90s, the country’s workers have consistently made MORE money over time.
Finally, chart #3 shows the historical crime rates for ALL types of violent crimes, once again broken down by party and president. See a similar pattern here? Crime started ramping up over time to a high in the early-mid 90s and then immediately and CONSISTENTLY started going down, down, down. We now have the lowest crime rate that the country has had since around 1994ish, when I was a precocious teenager. And it kept on getting better when Bush Jr was in office, Obama, Trump, and Biden.
So… why did I take the time to modify these charts and publish them? What am I trying to say here?
Whoever is in the top spot, whoever is in “power”, truly doesn’t affect our daily lives in any meaningful way. There are forces much larger and non-controllable that they would have no ability to even hardly budge.
Why? Because they aren’t a king, and that is freaking awesome. We have THREE CO-EQUAL branches of government that all share responsibilities for keeping our country going, and thousands of those “horrible deep state” people that work in their little government offices, filling out paperwork, stamping, stapling, and mailing stuff. Keeping things stable and steady.
Because of all this, we’re doing pretty darn well no matter who the chief executive officer is. So, please, stop complaining about how great the “good old days” were, and stop complaining about this politician or that one “ruining” the country. The country ain’t “ruined”, it hasn’t been “ruined” for over 30 years now, and things just keep getting BETTER.
Knock it off, turn down the volume, put away the pitchforks. Realize that we’re all humans, and we all ultimately want the same things – happy, safe, lives… happy, safe, families. See each other as humans, not cartoon characters.
Things are good. Things are great, actually, and they keep getting better. We’re getting there, bit by bit, together. Stop yelling at each other, and start listening to each other, and we can surpass even the awesomeness that is today.
Things aren’t perfect, of course they aren’t. Yes, we have problems. Serious problems. But, we need to be able to have reasonable, adult conversations about the problems that we DO need to solve, and how to solve them, in a way that everyone can be “okay” with. Calmly, rationally. Without name calling. Without yelling at each other. Without turning our fellow man (or woman) into two-dimensional cardboard cutout parodies. Listen twice, then talk.
All this hyperbole about American dictators, and American socialist/communists, and all that other nuttiness? Just let it go. I’ve been guilty of it in the past myself, but I was wrong. And I was wrong to do it. The world isn’t ending, and it’s probably not going to end. The closest we came to that was probably in the 60s when the “Cold War” almost got hot. We’re not there right now. We’re in a better place than that.
So, take a chill pill, enjoy life, and be kind to all. That’s all.