America is in decline, and a recent study found that the nation scores very low on something called a “well-being” index.
This is no surprise. The nation is governed by a fascist criminal gang that is not opposed by feckless Democrats, and a population cowed into slumber either because they are working two jobs, are sucked into an endless spiral of credit card debt, or just have no hope for a future.
To fill these gaps, many Americans are enmeshed in social media, sports fanaticism, get-rich-quick schemes, crypto trading, or fantasy worlds with gremlins, witches, time machines, and Star Trek outer space.
This is understandable because things on Earth are not so great.
“The bad news is that just about every part of the country — even Minnesota — is seeing a decline in self-reported personal well-being and mental health. Likewise, people throughout the country trust institutions and their fellow Americans less. Overall, we are increasingly unhappy,” according to an article by Nicholas Kristof, in the New York Times.
Kristof then goes on to list how individual states rank in the “well-being” index. He lists the top 10 states for well-being in the study, in order, as: Minnesota, New Hampshire, Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Utah. Almost all states are Democratic.
The states at the bottom of this “well-being” index are mostly Republican: Louisiana is at the bottom, followed by New Mexico, West Virginia, Nevada, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arkansas and South Carolina.
Predictably, Kristof ends the article on a happy note by using a quote from Abraham Lincoln, a Times favorite, “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
Combatting the Media’s Naïve Liberal Optimism
It’s unclear why so many people in the media always put on a happy face when talking about Trump and his gang. Reporters and cable news readers don’t have an obligation to say that things in the country will get better when they have no evidence of that.
The media’s other unchallenged belief is that all change is peaceful. Absolutely not. This is not evident in thousands of years of recorded history, yet the media persists in denigrating protests that turn violent, usually after a police attack, or wringing their hands when there is a violent protest. They would never discuss why the actions of Luigi Mangione, the man
accused of shooting the CEO of a health care company, had some merit, even though Mangione received significant support on social media, an often-cited measure of public opinion.
It’s not surprising that most young reporters today have no historical knowledge about the role of violent protests. There is no major social or political change in the US that has not had a violent component.
Without violent protests against the government and police, there would be no civil rights, women’s rights, abortion rights, environmental rights, Native American rights, gay rights, voting rights, union rights, animal rights, and anti-war protest rights.
This is because every major right achieved by Americans meant that you had to oppose the people who had control over you, usually through violence. Slave holders did not want to voluntarily abandon their investments in slaves. Men who want control over women do not want to grant voting rights and abortion rights to women. Gay rights emerged to fight all forms of discrimination and violent attacks. The same is true for unions that sought to oppose management to secure better wages and working conditions.
Still, too many reporters and news readers have no awareness of history. Instead, they pick up on the prevailing behavior in corporate newsrooms that all violence that emanates from ordinary people is evil, but corporate and state violence is acceptable. No wonder ordinary people feel helpless.
Kristof Misses Lincoln’s Main Point
Unfortunately, Mr. Kristof misses Lincoln’s main point. His comments were made after the Civil War that killed over 620,000 Americans. The issues that caused that war—slavery, secession, the need to produce a master class in the South—are all issues that are still with us today. The MAGA Republicans, as reactionary conservatives who hate change, want to roll back the clock and re-interpret history. This explains the “Lost Cause” revision of the Confederacy’s loss in the Civil War, the rollback of Reconstruction, and the Great Replacement Theory from the Nazis.
The MAGA Republicans are the incarnation of the Confederates who want to erase voting access for Blacks, deprive women of their rights, impose wage slavery on ordinary people, avoid any war that does not benefit the corporate (plantation) owners, or just benefit themselves by stealing from the public (the Trump crime family).
Mr. Kristof’s article was published on June 6, 2026, a few weeks before the nation’s 250th anniversary.
But what a sad Fourth of July 2026 this will be.
Uninformed and Beaten Down Americans
About two-thirds of Americans are so uninformed, selfish, delusional, and unhappy that they voted for a convicted felon, fake business success, liar, sociopath, and criminal to be president twice. Yes, two times.
Americans voted for Trump and his reactionary movement because they see they have a limited future. They make less than their parents, and Trump, their elected leader, gets to steal and grope anyone he wants with impunity from Congress, the judicial system, and the Supreme Court.
Unfortunately, ordinary people cannot get away with any of those crimes because they live in a system with police trained to use massive force against anyone who contests the civil order, especially against the federal government. As we have seen, if ICE or cops kill someone, they have good odds of never facing any penalty.
So, Mr. Kristof’s naïve liberal optimism that the nation must “bind up its wounds,” along with another favorite quote from Lincoln used often in the New York Times about controlling “our better angels,” is grossly out of touch to describe the nation’s current fascist state.
Contemporary America is ruled by money. The control is from the richest people obsessed with making more money, controlling who gets it, devising strategies to separate ordinary, uninformed people from their money, and then hiding the money where it cannot be taxed.
Everything in America is monetized, a buzzword for extracting the last dollar from Americans who are bombarded by ads to buy more, or finance more, or borrow more. Americans are wage slaves, people who are targeted by unethical behavioral marketers at corporations to deprive naïve people of their money.
This explains the rise of crypto, offshore banking, gambling, pardons by Trump of financial fraudsters who pay millions for a pardon, and average MAGA supporters who steal and evade taxes, and will also probably never be prosecuted by the MAGA-controlled IRA.
So, as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the elite say the looting of the country has just started. Trump has a few more years to build his multi-billion-dollar criminal empire. His followers have the same time frame, and maybe longer if the wimpy corporate Democrats decide that stealing money from taxpayers could also benefit the Democratic Party elite.
But for average Americans, ‘fuh ‘gedda ‘bout it.
The USA’s best days are behind us.
Let the looting continue. No one will stop it.
