I wrote the essay below the day before the November 2024 election, when it remained very uncertain whether it would be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as our next president.

The essay itself did not get picked up at very many news aggregates. Nor did it garner as much traffic as would be expected, based on the aggregates that did pick it up. I believe the reason was the depressing title.

No matter, the point I made then still holds. The fundamental American culture — based on freedom, family, and the Judeo-Christian values of Western Civilization — that made this the most prosperous place ever created by humankind in its entire history no longer exists.

What will come remains unknown. We might see a resurgence of that culture, especially based on the public’s response following the murder of Charlie Kirk. Then again, we might not. As I said in the very first line of my history, Leaving Earth, societies change.

I repost this essay now, during Thanksgiving week, because I strongly believe it essential that we understand exactly where we stand, in order to make it possible for us to move forward, in the right direction. The essay is also another example of my never-ending and too often successful effort to look farther into the future than others. I think a year later this essay stands up quite well in this sense.

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Farewell to America

“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

Despite my headline, this essay is not intended to be entirely pessimistic. Instead it is my effort to accept a reality that I think few people, including myself, have generally been able to process: The country we shall see after tomorrow’s election will not be the America as founded in 1776 and continued to prosper for the next quarter millennium.

The country can certainly be made great again. Elon Musk’s SpaceX proves it, time after time. The talent and creativity of free Americans is truly endless, and if Donald Trump wins it is very likely that energy will be unleashed again, in ways that no one can predict.

The country can certainly become free again. There is no law that prevents the elimination of bureaucracy and regulation, no matter how immortal government agencies appear to be. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 proves this. Though Russia has sadly retreated back to its top-down government-ruling ways, the country did wipe out almost all its bureaucracy in 1991, resulting in an exuberant restart that even today is nowhere near as oppressive as Soviet rule.

Should Donald Trump win, we should have every expectation that he will do the largest house-cleaning of the federal government ever. The benefits will be immeasurable, and magnificent.

What however will not change, even if Donald Trump wins resoundingly tomorrow, is the modern culture and political ethics that now exist. That modern culture is fundamentally different than the America that existed during the country’ s first 200 years, and it guarantees that America can never be the country it once was.

The kind of people Americans once all aspired to be

Emotions

First there is the emotional nature of modern culture. The America of the past was remarkable cool-headed and rational. Anyone who spends any time reading the writings of the past can see it. Anyone who watches any television or movies from before 1960 can see it as well. Americans all wished to be Perry Mason or Sherlock Holmes or Thomas Jefferson, thoughtful, intelligent, educated, rational, and entirely in favor of the rule of law and truth, no matter where it led.

Today we are a nation of children, often allowing emotions and outrage to determine our decision-making process instead of knowledge and considered rational thought. Few read books anymore. Instead, they scroll endlessly on their smart phones, watching short X clips that might provide some information but mostly act to simply massage one’s emotions.

You can garner this reality by one simple fact: We use the word “feel” in place of “thought” almost all the time. People almost never ask others “What do you think?” Instead, we ask each other “What do you feel?” And the answer always is, “I feel this,” or “I feel that.” It is feelings always.

Donald Trump himself epitomizes this change. He is unquestionably intelligent and thoughtful in his actions, but his approach to campaigning has always been emotional and aimed for the gut. His use of insulting nicknames against his opponents shows this. And the enthusiasm in which his supporters latch on reinforces the point.

Nor is Trump of course alone in this. The absurd accusation by the Democrats that Trump is Hitler and his supporters are fascists is equally demagogic and emotional and empty-headed. It is all feelings, with no substance.

Now, you can have a successful country based on feelings, but such a nation will not be as sophisticated or as reasoned. Nor will it have much to do with the very essence of the Enlightenment and the entire founding principles that created Western Civilization.

The first Thanksgiving by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris

Religion and Family

Second, there is the disappearance in American society of religion and family. The America I grew up in the post-WWII era was the same America from the Pilgrim days. Men and women got married in order to raise children. Children were the centerpiece of everything everyone did. Divorce was so rare that in my youth I literally never knew any kid raised in a broken home.

Once again, this reality is very evident to anyone who spends any time reading or watching the literature or visual media of the past. It is amazing how often family and raising kids is central to the stories of movies and television. Men and women dated for the purpose of creating a family, not simply to have sex. Marriage existed to create a firm and solid environment for the children to come. And the adult view was to the future, not for themselves but for the children couples were bringing into the world.

Not so much today. In movies today men and women date to find a great and perfect partner, but the subject of marriage and children is rarely considered. In fact, it is sometimes intentionally left out, as if the word “marriage” is a curse word no one wants to hear.

Religion is also gone as a central part of much of American life. This was already changing in the 1950s, but before World War II almost all Americans made some form of the Judeo-Christian religion a part of their life, whether it be Judaism or Protestantism or Catholicism or any one of many Christian denominations. People went to church. They read the Bible. They considered the moral component very deeply in anything they did.

Once again, this fact becomes very evident if you watch movies from prior to 1950. The portrayal of religion is pervasive, and almost always positive. Religion was not considered perfect, but it was recognized as an important and essential tool for incorporating morality in every decision. Right and wrong mattered.

Today it is considered “weird” to be religious. And if you are secular you are supposed to consider religious people inferior, barbaric, and close-minded fools.

I am secular and don’t think any of those things, but I have also been part of the secular community my whole life, and have seen other secular people say these things routinely. And if I ever dare speak positive things about religion, I find myself condemned and ostracized as a weirdo, very quickly.

Blind politics in all things

Finally, there is the warping of our culture by politics. Once, politics was rarely introduced in everyday life. People ran their businesses, their families, their schools, and their day-to-day activities thinking only of the very basics of their own lives.

Today, politics enters into every single one of those tasks. You can’t do anything without considering the politics. Often you have to do things differently than you would have wanted, in order to address the politics of the situation.

Combined this obsessive focus on politics with the increased emotional nature of our culture, the result is a country where people are so consumed by politics that almost half the country strongly hates the other half — for political reasons — with little desire on either part to cross the bridge to defuse the situation.

I want to note that this hatred is not evenly distributed. My experience as a secular Jew working first in the film business, then as a college teacher, and finally as a science journalist — all communities that are largely dominated by those on the left — I have learned unequivocally that it is the left that hates the most and is the most close-minded. This one clip below from last week illustrates this fact most bluntly. Most commentators focused on the decision of Hugh Hewitt to walk off the broadcast and quit the Washington Post. My focus is different.

Hugh Hewitt goes full BEASTMODE on the Washington Post, which continues its epic partisan spiral. pic.twitter.com/os20z2IJly

— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) November 1, 2024

When Hewitt notes the basic facts, that Bucks County had broken the law and was rightfully sued and the court ruled that “Trump was right,” Jonathan Capehart, associate editor of the Washington Post, has no interest in these facts. Instead he responds with indignation, “I don’t appreciate being lectured about reporting.” Yet everything he and Ruth Marcus, another associate editor at the Washinton Post, said about the actions of Trump and the Republican Party in Bucks county at the start of the clip was fundamentally wrong. They both bluntly claimed that Trump was using lawfare to interfere with the election in Pennsylvania, when the truth was the exact opposite.

In other words, these are propagandists, not journalists. But more to my point, they are also close-minded and filled with such hatred of Trump and Republicans that they no longer are interested in the truth. All that matters is that their side win, come hell or high water.

And Capehart represents one half of our nation today. American can never return to the free and open society of my youth and most of its history until these people change, and in my entire life, I have never seen any indication they have any interest in doing so. If anything, the close-mindedness and hatred has only increased with time.

And in this clip Capehart proves this fact, most embarrassingly.

Thus, even if Trump wins tomorrow his effort to reduce the administrative state and bring freedom back to America will surely be stymied by the half of our population represented by people like Capehart. They will have no interest in the truth or the best policy. All that will move them is their hatred of Trump.

And should Kamala Harris win? Not only will none of the positive changes I outlined above occur, but we can surely expect the close-minded left to aggressively move to cement its power. The nation will then surely descend further on the path to becoming a bankrupt and starving Venezuela, since leadership that is close-minded and focused on hate can never make good choices.

So farewell to America. What the future brings is hard to predict, but without question it will not be the good and grand nation I was born and raised in. It might become great again, but it will do so with a poison within it that will be dragging it down.