For me, it looks rather realistic. If you love the US, shouldn’t you embrace such articles in order to have some intellectual food to reflect on? If you don’t think so, the current admin provides more than enough good news anyway.
If you love the US, you should embrace thoughtful articles that bring up neglected but valid points in insightful ways. This article is not that. This article is yet another "orange man bad" lamenting that America now isn't as great as it was from WWII through 1970.
The problem with articles like this is that the people who already agree with the author will think the article is insightful and focus on the parts that are obviously correct (social cohesion genuinely has decreased), and the people who disagree will focus on the parts that are obviously wrong (oh look it's that misleading statistic again about the top X Americans having more wealth than the combined wealth of the bottom 50% because the bottom 50% have a combined wealth of about $0 because debt exists).
The article gets shared by people who agree, who think everyone should read it for the author's "deep insight", and shared by people who disagree who say "look what the brainwashed people believe", and the article gets lots of clicks and ad impressions and everyone hates each other a little bit more.
> The problem with articles like this is that the people who already agree with the author will think the article is insightful and focus on the parts that are obviously correct
Raises hand
I agree with your point here, more or less, in that I think the article was written the way it was to achieve the effect you call out, but while I probably mostly agree with the author's political positions I also think the article's kinda bad because it's poorly presented and the "insight" it offers is mostly cliché. (see my other posts in this discussion for details, should you care).
It absolutely is. My problem is that that is the maximally controversy-inducing framing for that particular statistic. A breakdown of net worth by quintile will show the same effect in a clearer way. "The top 3 people have the same combined wealth as the bottom 140M" sounds like "the typical member of the top 3 people has almost 50 million times as much wealth as the typical member of the bottom 140M" when in practice the bottom 140M is mostly composed of people with substantial-ish negative net worth (e.g. a car loan) or substantial-ish positive net worth (e.g. a paid off car or a small retirement account).
The disparity exists and is large, but a misleading representation of it doesn't help anyone except those who profit off controversy.
I think I get your point. However, wouldn’t any political analysis/opinion lead to that phenomenon? The „valid points in insightful ways“ are too subjective to be a reliable indicator.
> "As they stare into the mirror and perceive only the myth of their exceptionalism, Americans remain almost bizarrely incapable of seeing what has actually become of their country."
I actually love the United States and would like to see articles like this stop trying to "unravel" it.