We need to devote far more attention to our role in fomenting this malaise. This certainly includes the way so many teachers and professors have adopted a narrative of “America the Awful” and how education leaders reflexively embraced a world of one-to-one devices, in which staring at screens has become central to the school day.
Today, though, I want to look outside the classroom and focus on the real-world civic education that we’re delivering to our youth every day. A reasonable observer could conclude that America’s leaders are striving to deliver a lesson in dysfunctional democracy, irresponsible stewardship, corrupt capitalism, and disdain for the rule of law.
We’re in the midst of a government shutdown. Why? Republicans and Democrats can no longer resolve policy differences without lapsing into brinksmanship. It’s been over a quarter-century since Congress passed all its appropriations bills on time. Never in their lives have today’s college students seen a year when Congress fulfilled its primary responsibility. At this point, things only get done via executive action or by Congress stretching the budget reconciliation process to the breaking point so that a frail, temporary majority can cram big changes into law via (what was supposed to be) an accounting mechanism.
There’s a dispiriting sense that self-dealing is no longer something that’s surprising or especially shameful. The Government Accounting Office reports that over $300 billion was stolen from pandemic relief programs, and it’s met with yawns. Companies gobbled up vast sums from the Biden administration’s CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act, promising to expand their chip production or build electric car charging stations and then . . . didn’t. This has all generated astonishingly little outrage, embarrassment, or introspection. Meanwhile, President Trump is treating the White House like an all-you-can-grab buffet, even as he shakes down Intel, big tech, and big law firms by proffering favors and making threats. None of this bolsters faith in the integrity of free markets or the fairness of capitalism.
Then there’s the combination of avarice, self-interest, and inertia that have produced a staggering national debt of over $37 trillion. The debt is up by $1.8 trillion just this year and has more than doubled since 2009. We’re paying $900 billion in interest alone this year—that’s 1 out of every 8 dollars the government spends (or about $2,500 for every single American). The lion’s share of this spending funds health care and retirement for older Americans (as well as some shockingly routine fraud). Indeed, the government is closed because Republicans (who added trillions of debt this summer) and Democrats (who added trillions under Biden) are squabbling about whether to borrow even more money to extend “temporary” health care benefits adopted as an “emergency” response to the Covid pandemic. Oh, and today, very few policymakers or advocates evince consistent concern about any of this. If you’re under 25 and paying attention, you’ve got reason to be skeptical of democracy and anxious about the future.
Then there’s the spectacle of lawfare that has become shockingly routine. Remember when President Biden had great fun mocking Trump for being stuck in court as Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg pursued him in a transparently political exercise? Or when Colorado Democrats tried to use a, umm, creative reading of the 14th Amendment to keep Trump off the state’s ballot? And there was plenty more. Well, Trump promised scorched-earth payback, and he’s delivering. Attorney General Bondi shucked her way through federal prosecutors until she found a Trump loyalist willing to drag former FBI Director James Comey into court on laughable charges. Trump, who once led rallies in chants of “Lock her up!” when it came to Hillary Clinton, is now calling for the arrest of Chicago’s mayor and Illinois’s governor for opposing his plans to deploy troops in the Windy City. I could keep going, with Letitia James, the FCC commissioner imitating Tony Soprano, the Attorney General threatening the wrong kinds of speech, the president’s lawsuits against media companies . . .
