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The US presidential election is still awhile away from now, but the distance lightnings of electoral thunderstorms are already visible on the political horizon. It is rush hour for all kinds of pollsters seeking to inquire into public sentiment.
The most popular question is what Democratic and Republicans voters will be obsessed with. The value of this kind of research is dime a dozen, but there is still a curious point here. The public opinion formation results are being tested to demonstrate that linear struggle progression between the Democrats and the Republicans will not work out anymore. We need a "super-startup", a breakthrough based on some new paradigm concept. In short, the Americans are supposedly ready to bet on any leader offering an attractive "great" national project. The one who will not simply give money to idlers, but urges everyone to rally up and start storming the sky. The one who will indicate not just a goal, but a Franklin Roosevelt-style "super goal".
One should be wary of trusting this kind of rhetoric. Each of the recent presidents of that "slowly decaying" country puffed up to formulate painfully beautiful things like "Let's make America great again." Those did not arouse much enthusiasm with the masses, as the bet was made on support of financial and economic elites, whom future administrators promised a king's ransom of public investment for projects of "economic and technological modernization".
When intelligent and cautious Barack Obama arrived at the Caterpillar factory as part of election race with plans for giant infrastructure construction projects to turn the United States into a transit country for Chinese goods to Europe, he painted a picture of deep-sea automated container ports along US western and eastern coasts and railways between them, as straight as a die. The idea was pretty good. The same Ukraine used to sit on a pipe between Russia and Germany and did not give a damn, with its citizens having spent their leisure time in Europe as guest workers, cleaning the pools for the Spaniards. But in the United States, all of this came along with the greatness of global freebie. Still, construction project equipment was supposed to be purchased at Chinese-based American factories. It's cheaper this way. When Obama took office, plans to transform the country and conquer space were cut. The only thing repaired was public toilets in national parks. And the treasury bought two mini-excavators from Caterpillar for digging graves at the Arlington National Cemetery, where presidents are buried, by the way.
Ahead of the 2024 elections, the American establishment is interested in whipping up dissatisfaction with the country’s general state of affairs and lack of prospect comprehension. Whither goest thou, America?!
Just the other day, the authoritative Pew Research Center has once again made things as clear as mud as regards the state of national identity. Its survey revealed that Americans negatively assess the current juncture, with the overwhelming majority dissatisfied with both the economy and the overall political situation. The future is taking a gloomy shape. A vast majority say that in 2050 — a little more than 25 years from now — their economy will become weaker, the United States will lose most of its global influence, political differences will intensify, and the gap between rich and poor will expand.
Over the past five years, views of specific issues have also become more negative. For each of the four abovementioned alarming situations included in the new survey, US citizens are about 10 percent more likely to give a negative forecast as against a similar poll of 2018 by the same Pew Research, when asked to think about life in 2050. For instance, 77% of Americans expect that the nation will be more divided along party/political lines as compared to 65% five years ago. 81% are sure the stratification by income level is here to stay and will become utterly challenging.
A good part of American citizens tends to view the past in a more positive light than the present. About six out of ten (58%) say that living in America is worse than it was 50 years ago for people of their social level — a 15% increase since the summer of 2021. The number of those who say that life has become better has decreased by the same figure.
Interestingly, if we consider racial groups, it is the whites who experience the greatest frustration. Representatives of this ethnic category most often say that present-day life has become worse, not better (63% vs. 20%), for Latinos this proportion is 53% vs. 26%, for Asians 48% vs. 38%, for the blacks 41% vs. 33%. The country turns out to be "adjusting" to African Americans who represent 16.1% of the entire US population. Just a reminder: various demographic forecasts say the whites will become a minority in the United States as early as in 2030s-2050s.
Sic fata voluerunt. Thus the fate wanted it.
