How strange is the U.S., when people simply choose to ignore their own economic reality and prefer to believe the nation's finances are going to hell... particularly other people's finances?
Many recent polls and surveys indicate that a majority of Americans are very pessimistic about the nation's economy, not to mention President Biden's part in it all, despite the wealth of data that shows things are being pretty good for most people. Some of this is likely knee jerk Angry White People refusing to give a Democrat credit for, well, anything. But the numbers are large enough that this persistent negative take on our money situation is quite wide spread.
It appears that many people cannot "believe their own eyes" regarding money and buying power and income and expenses. This is a drag on the Biden reelection campaign, but maybe that can be turned around with enough PR and solid journalism.
I saw a related survey that reflects the same stubborn pessimism, but on a different topic. All adults seem to accept as fact that young people are not engaged in the news and current events, but a Northwestern University study found that Gen Z is actively engaged with the news, though often through social media. In fact, recent voting numbers suggest that our old "accepted truths" about low voting by youth may be outdated.
So, the self-fulfilling prophesy of "only older adults are paying attention," thus leading to ignoring the concerns of young voters, may lead to very unexpected results.
Considering how difficult it is to contact and engage with young people on any sort of survey, I suspect that most of the polling that newspapers and news sites are obsessed with (who's winning? who's moving up or down in the polls?) may be seriously flawed.
After all: garbage in, garbage out.
When large chunks of the population simply "know it's true," without any current data, we lose the ability to predict everything from election results to media engagement to taste in music or films.
I am presenting a session next week at J-Day, the annual high school state journalism conference, and one of my points will be to find "joy in reporting." I will be exploring the many opportunities to use sports reporting as a vehicle for storytelling, but my claim would be true about any topic we might explore.
Everything I read about young people concerns their mental health problems and depression and apathy toward, well, everything. At this point, adults simply accept that schools don't work, teachers are ineffective, the future is dim, and learning is just not happening.
I'm sure there are some students who are suffering, who are depressed and defeated. But youth are quite resilient, and there have always been kids who are behind or negative. What if more adults simply began from a position of "young people are confronting challenges and are interested in having a successful and enjoyable life."
No, they don't know what the future holds. Heck, I had no idea when I was their age, and the U.S. was in an active war in Vietnam with a draft. There's always something.
BTW, I heard an interview on the radio today about this being the 70th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice (a good reminder that the war is officially still on... just paused). I was three and blissfully unaware. It's sobering to think that a war that occurred so long ago is within my life span.
But today I am more concerned with the writer and actor strikes and how this will affect my fall TV viewing.
Americans are unaware of all sorts of things, it seems... and "bliss" is not a good word to describe this state. We are a nation that distrusts education and elites. It's in our DNA, sadly.
It just seems to be getting worse.
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