On the hard days ahead, and the trap we are (eagerly, so eagerly) setting for ourselves

Drugs and gambling eat people. And we keep making them more accessible and powerful. Meantime, "ethical non-monogamy" is just another way to spell "key party." It's 1972 all over, with stronger drugs.

Last week, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg warned of the self-centered ennui marching across the United States:

I keep thinking of the early 1970s, another period when broad-based, idealistic social movements had recently fragmented, with some turning toward a militant sectarianism while others withdrew from politics, seeking self-realization in lifestyle experimentation.

Fair warning: Goldberg is a progressive, though an open-minded one.

In December 2018, she interviewed me about Tell Your Children, my book on the mental health risks of cannabis. She believed cannabis should be legalized, but she treated my arguments respectfully. (This was before my reporting on lockdowns and the mRNAs made me the one who must not be named at the Times; before the elite media turned so polarized and hard-left it stopped engaging with inconvenient facts.)

So Goldberg made her comment in the context of a potential win for Donald Trump in November, which she thinks would be a disaster. Obviously, a lot of you disagree.

But I believe the specter she raises is broader even than the 2024 election, and will haunt us no matter who wins.

America is not well.

This warning isn’t just a feeling, or false nostalgia. (When I was a kid, we had Oldsmobiles! And Three’s Company.) Our decline is visible in the data.

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(The good old days! Hard to believe Olds got shut down.)

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We are the wealthiest society in human history.

Yet our life expectancy now badly trails most other developed countries - despite (despite?) our massive medical spending. Preventable deaths have shown terrible trends in the last few years. Not just overdoses, but murders, car accidents, even fires. Fewer Americans are marrying or having children.

Many of the young seem paralyzed, too, maybe because of the media’s endless whinging over climate change, with accompanying efforts to turn every blizzard or heat wave into a harbinger of the apocalypse. One would hardly know that weather-related deaths have plunged for generations.

But that’s only half the story. Maybe less.

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