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There are numerous ways to think about what is happening in our country at the moment.

Regardless of how they see it, most Americans feel pessimistic about the future, about where things are going and what the future holds for the nation.

According to a recent Pew Research poll, “Sizable majorities of U.S. adults say that in 2050 – just over 25 years away – the U.S. economy will be weaker, the United States will be less important in the world, political divisions will be wider and there will be a larger gap between the rich and the poor. Far fewer adults predict positive developments in each of these areas.” (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/americans-take-a-dim-view-of-the-nations-future-look-more-positively-at-the-past/)

All the categories had more positive responses a year ago, revealing the unsettling reality that negativism has gotten worse during this past year rather than better.

What is happening to us? When the facts suggest we have much to feel good about, why do we feel so negative about the way things are going?

Recently I suggested that some of the negativism is rooted in our being a spoiled people unaccustomed to hard times and personal sacrifice, ever how slight they may be.

I still believe that is a major factor in our national mood, but other factors are also playing a role in tempting the majority of Americans to lose hope about our country’s future.

One of them is the constant, persistent deluge of daily news about a vocal, radical minority who don’t want things to get better. They want us to join them in working against our own government, not to improve it, but to grind it to a halt.

These people don’t like modern America and they are determined to make life miserable for everybody who supports the progress America has made in dealing with social, economic, political, and racial inequalities.

They don’t like the more inclusive America that replaced the less inclusive, Christian white male dominated America of the past, and they’re fighting like hell to tear it down.

They are determined to sanitize an ugly past rooted in injustices, urged on by Donald Trump who knows his political future depends on convincing people their only hope for a better future lies with him.

What is disturbing is the extent to which the news media is giving Trump a forum for sowing discord and cynicism.

They insist they are doing their job, but I would argue they are doing his, allowing him to use them for his purposes. They are doing the same thing with his supporters when they interview them at rallies as if the stupid things they say are worth hearing.

The challenge, of course, sensible Americans face is much like what David Brooks said about Donald Trump. We cannot let these people get into our brains.

If we do they will consume us to the point of making us feel hopeless about the future. We become cynical and negative like they are. According to the Pew Survey, it’s already happening, even to the point where we wonder if they are in fact right about the way they see our country.

It’s up to us to refuse to take the bait, either from them or the news media. We can stay well informed without focusing daily on people who have lost all sense of balance and perspective and who have nothing constructive to say about improving the lives of all Americans. 

We’ve heard enough of it already. We don’t need to keep listening. Not one speech Trump is giving is worth hearing, for example, because he isn’t saying anything we haven’t heard hundreds of times. 

That is why the media’s fascination with him is so transparent. They claim to be reporting the news to keep us informed, but in fact their stories are essentially re-runs informing us of nothing we don’t already know. 

The political scene today is dominated by negativism and cynicism we cannot allow to infect our thinking. We should remember that radicals are a minority because they are radical while most people are not. 

More than that, they are largely troubled people who want to cause chaos because they hate their own lives and want to blame it on others. They are too wrapped up in their own grievances to join the rest of us in working to make life better for everyone. That takes too much work and too much time so they want to throw it all away for a man so full of himself he doesn’t actually see the people who cheers him at his solipsistic rallies. 

We cannot let the minority of radicals convince us that our own government is against us and must be replaced. Our job is to stay informed just enough to understand what policies and actions are good for the nation and which ones aren’t.  

We are the people who count today, not because we are better than the radicals, but because we care for the nation and not just ourselves, our complaints, our struggles. We are the ones who get to say that we want our children to study all aspects of history in school, that diversity is good, that inclusion works for all of us, and that no one person or group gets to tell our children what they can and cannot read.  

We are the heirs to past generations of Americans who fought hard to ensure that our nation took the right steps to do better at living up to its own goals and ideals. We are the Americans who understand that their struggles are now our own in order for future generations to have it better than we do. 

That is what our parents and grandparents wanted for us, and we owe it to our children and grandchildren to want them to have an even better life than we do.

This is our nation, and we should not, indeed, shall not, let the cynics and naysayers weaken it or take it away from us.