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October 2024

That ‘70s Show

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/10/04/that-70s-show-2/

A widening war in the Middle East that includes a literally more explosive Iran. Russians and Ukranians killing each other for no reason in a conflict in which the former has threatened a nuclear strike. A belligerent China menacing Taiwan. A dockworker strike (possibly resolved?) that could thrash an economy already ravaged by inflation. A migrant stream that is more invasion than immigration. Rising antisemitism.

Are we back in the 1970s, when the world felt unstable and the future appeared grim?

The words typed above would have not been applicable in late 2019, as Donald Trump was about to complete his third year in office. Then came the novel coronavirus, leading to both economic and political disruption that was not necessary.

America and the world left the ugly 1970s behind when Margaret Thatcher was elected British prime minister in 1979 and Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980.

The details are different. In the 1970s Americans were ground down by an energy crisis, then-record postwar unemployment, stagflation, political upheaval, societal turbulence and a war that seemed intractable until it was over and then felt like a discouraging loss. There were legitimate concerns that America was losing its status. The Cold War raged and we feared the Soviets would launch nuclear missiles and start a conflict that might finish off all of us.

Our world today is causing similar frustration, uneasiness, and division. All were dropped on us, like a bomb, by the Biden-Harris administration, which has followed the instruction manual of the Obama regime.

Apparently some – maybe close to half of the country – favor, and likely savor, our decline. Polls keep telling us the presidential election is going to be close.

The other half, or so, believes that perpetuating these conditions, in fact, choosing to make them worse, is insane.

Voters have a choice in one month. They can choose concession, to approve the candidates who want the U.S. to be just another country, nothing special, to be a nation of a few elites and a lower class that’s there to serve them. They can send out another Democratic president on another apology tour, invite Washington to increase its influence over our lives, and give censorship and lawfare enormous boosts.