You’ve probably read by now that a lot of middle aged and middle class Americans are not feeling good about their lives.
According to a study by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, two Princeton economists, the latter being a 2015 Nobel Prize winner in economic science, white middle aged Americans are dying at an accelerated rate that is far above any other category, and has been increasing for the past 15 years.
The increase is because of suicide, drug addiction, and liver disease related to alcoholism, and is happening mostly among men and women with no more than a high school diploma.
But here is the shocker. This rise in the death rate is happening more in America’s Bible Belt than anywhere else.
I realize it would be easy to make too much of that, but the fact that Bible believing Christians are killing themselves at a higher rate than any other sociological group is certainly noteworthy.
After all, the Bible Belt is the land of America’s politically and religiously conservatives, the very people who insist they are true patriotic Americans whose beliefs and values the whole country needs if it wants to survive liberalism’s assault.
So what’s going on?
Actually, nobody knows for sure, but the consensus is that a lot of Bible Belt middle aged Americans are disillusioned because of the loss of the American dream.
They were told that if they worked hard, played by the rules, went to church, and kept out of trouble they would reap a good reward. Tragically things haven’t turned out that way.
And a lot of them blame liberals for a lot of reasons, none more prominent than public assistance programs paid for by taxes they have to pay.
These people are mad because they think public assistance has created a “nanny state” where too many people expect the government to take care of them. That’s why they hate the federal government.
And that’s why they get angry when they are standing in line at the grocery store and see somebody using food stamps.
Even more infuriating, the economy they refuse to believe is rigged against them as Senator Elizabeth Warren has been telling them has no decent paying job to replace the one they had before the recession, and so now that their unemployment compensation has run out they are forced to use food stamps themselves, and they hate it.
So what does the future hold for them, and for all of us? I think that is a question whose answer is very much up for grabs. Is there any reason to have hope for them and for our country?
My answer is Yes.
I say that because I think we are in a transition period wherein we are moving from the myths we have told ourselves about ourselves to a new reality that will force us to make adjustments similar to the ones our European neighbors had to make when the age of colonialism came to an end.
I’m talking about myths like we are the greatest nation on earth without equal, or that we can rule the world by military might, that we are the world’s best democracy, that everyone wants to be like us, that capitalism works for everybody, that having guns makes us safer instead of more violent, or that we are a people whose highest values are freedom and justice.
The hope I see is that this transition period is one that is forcing us to grow up as a people, to see how we have contributed to the problems we have.
I happen to believe we were once a great nation, but I also believe we got full of ourselves and lost our way.
There is no reason we cannot find our way back, but it will happen only if we tell ourselves the truth about ourselves. Obviously some among us are finding this transition difficult to maneuver, but most of us will make it through.
That is because the greatest truth of all is that truth is our best friend in all circumstances.
But that’s what I think. What about you?
linnposts.com 