Stop me if you’ve heard this one already, but our state and country are in dire straits.
Not the fun kind of Dire Straits either, as in the “Sultans of Swing” band led by British singer-songwriter Mark Knopfler, but the kind of dire straits bemoaned by politicians and cable news talking heads.
That’s what the polling says, at least. The 2023 Kansas Speaks survey from Fort Hays State University found that 20.5% of residents found the economy “poor” or “very poor,” and 40.5% believed the economic situation was worsening. Nationally, Gallup reports that a staggering 77% of Americans are dissatisfied with the country’s course.
With their eyes on Election Day, politicians too are eager to persuade us that the sky is not only falling but has been crashing down in cloudy chunks for years now. Republican leaders scaremonger about the southern border. Democratic leaders claim that democracy hangs in the balance, but their allies refuse to protect it. Here in Kansas, GOP bigwigs will make the case this session for wholesale changes to taxation and education.
Yet here’s what I wonder.
If life in Kansas and the United States is so terrible – if our economy and democracy truly perch upon a perilous point of no return – why isn’t anyone acting like it?
Don’t misunderstand me. I think that elections this year will be enormously important for the future of our country. We should be on guard for worst-case scenarios. Former President Donald Trump poses a real, continued threat to democratic norms. Yet every election is important for the future of a city or state or nation.
I wonder if we haven’t gotten so used to speaking in exaggerated, doom-laden superlatives that we’re missing what’s in front of our noses. That is, our state and country seem to be rolling along pretty well right now.
Take a handful of recent facts.
Kansas notched a 2.9% unemployment rate in November. The United States enjoys a 3.7% unemployment rate. Both are remarkable given the public’s accompanying negativity. As for government, Kansas will end the fiscal year with nearly $3 billion in the treasury. The U.S. managed to end 2023 while avoiding a much-predicted recession
Indeed, regardless of rhetoric from on high, people act in their daily lives as though we live in a functional society. We don’t see Americans forming their own migrant caravans to flee from Minnesota to Canada.
Indeed, regardless of rhetoric from on high, people act in their daily lives as though we live in a functional society. We don’t see Americans forming their own migrant caravans to flee from Minnesota to Canada.
Or as economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times on Monday: “Whatever Americans may say to pollsters, they’re behaving as if they live in a prosperous, fairly safe (by historical standards) country.”
The disconnect can be explained, at least in my mind, by the profound national trauma of COVID-19.
The pandemic strained societal bonds, not to mention trust in institutions. It left liberals and conservatives frothing at one another over everyday routines such as attending school or shopping at the grocery store. More than one million have died in the United States. More than 10,000 have died in Kansas.
While economic recovery from the disruption has been surprisingly smooth, the mental recovery has not. Political actors from all parties and of all persuasions have seized on the viral disruption to suggest that somehow our country, our state, our lives are a miserable, ruined hellscape.
But I just don’t think that’s true. At least not as most of us live our lives day to day.
The sad truth is that both parties benefit from making life seem dire, at least on the national level. Democrats and Republicans appear ready to run unpopular candidates for president on oppoainf tickets, and they need juice that can only be squeezed from the grapes of despair.
Democratic leaders want voters to believe that the stakes are existential. All the better to sell President Joe Biden as a comforting grandfather. Republicans want to persuade their voters of the same thing – so they can once again sell the deeply unappetizing Trump to a nauseous nation.
I’ve called the former president an authoritarian threat. He would do real damage in a second term. Yet I also believe that the nation would survive that term and we would have many more elections and presidents, good and bad alike. Both things can be true. We don’t have to believe the world will end to take politics seriously.
In a similar vein, conservative advocates want Kansans to believe that our educational system and tax code are outmoded and fundamentally flawed.
Yet the education system continues to educate the vast majority of Kansan children effectively and efficiently, given long-term funding shortfalls. We could always try actually spending money on schools for a few years. And let no one forget that the current version of our tax code brought the state back from the brink of fiscal ruin.
Kansas doesn’t sound like a state that needs radical transformation.
Neither does this nation.
Most of us want stable lives, predictable government and a prosperous future. We have built a functioning society, one that can be both sustained and improved as needed. Rather than constantly shouting about imagined end times, let’s focus on doing what works and stop doing what doesn’t.
We don’t have to be in dire straits if we don’t want to be. Although the band does rock.
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
