I collected more than enough news items and thoughts that flashed upon my inward eye through the week to come up with seven whole Friday Takes. I am mulling over the latest thing by Shawn McCain Tirres. And there is a fantastic article in UnHerd this week. And! Best of all, there is a clamor for Takes From Planet Fitness, which I will definitely begin working on asap. But, because I am easily distractable and got my mind bent in one single direction, I’m going to laboriously work through the David Brooks article in the Atlantic that I mentioned yesterday. It is called “HOW AMERICA GOT MEAN: In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.” I feel like I was pretty dismissive, which wasn’t very nice, and since Mr. Brooks took the trouble to write such a long thought, I think he deserves to have it thoughtfully dismantled, if only by me, of whom he has never heard.
Because, I must confess, this article, like the one published by NRO this week, absolutely boils my onion. I have been trying to invent a wonderful simile to express my feelings about Mr. Brooks’ diagnosis of what’s wrong with this country—Mr. Chesterton falling heavily upon a tin roof, the baying of aunts like mastodons across the primeval swamp, a pack of crying muddy children traipsing across my clean kitchen floor. The only one that seems to fit is a vision of Mr. Brooks, in sailing shorts, meticulously rearranging all the deckchairs on a large boat as it slips silently and smoothly into the murky depths, never to rise again. As he disappears into the deluge, he gasps out one last headline, “The Sandwich Was Made With Striata.”
Therefore, let us commence. Mr. Brooks sets up the trouble:
Over the past eight years or so, I’ve been obsessed with two questions. The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married. More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021. My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean?
Yesterday afternoon, I found myself wandering the highways and byways looking for a particular kind of sportsing shoe for my second son, a task I put off for many days because it is so depressing to do. In the bowels of a hideously lit anti-architectural box, I encountered the usual panorama of American despair. I don’t know if Mr. Brooks has ever been to the Burlington Coat Factory, or to Walmart, but if he were to go there he would see the heaps of exhausted poor, pushing their carts, rifling through bins of school supplies trying to fill out their lists.
I observed two little boys, one in each store. Both of them had their ears pierced. One was trying to climb up the shelves to reach a Pez dispenser (more about him in a moment), and the other was sitting in a cart, begging his mother to answer the question of his soul— “Can I please skip practice this afternoon?” He was crying. Nevertheless, she refused to acknowledge that he had even spoken and pushed along, literally, through the self-checkout where we all get to pay for the privilege of filling our own bags. The look of despair on his little face struck me to the heart, and yet, as a mother, I know he must have been pushing her buttons all day. Maybe she was being unkind, but maybe she had had enough, and, with no greater Hope to appeal to, she just kept pushing her way along through the dismal afternoon.
Back to the little boy pursuing Pez, I happened, as I was finally leaving the store, to pass the male adult who had been with him a few minutes before, the father, I expect, though I wouldn’t want to assume. This grown gentleman, robed in sagging shorts and a hideous T, had valiantly attempted to stick it out in the line with his beloved. But there were two other children besides the little be-earring-ed guy, and the cart was to the brim full of clothes, shoes, books, backpacks, and toys. After about ten minutes in line, his frustration and ennui mounting, he gave up and went out to sit on the bench while the lady kept at it.
So anyway, you can quote a lot of statistics, or you can just drive to some normal places where people have to go all the time, like a grocery store or a low-end clothing chain. It’s beastly how people have to trudge through the long aisles, overweight themselves, devoid of any greater purpose than filling their carts. Most people today have learned the disappointing lesson that going to church profits them nothing because there is no God, not really, not one they would care to know. If there is one he is incomprehensible, and uninterested in their actual troubles. Instead, they go shopping. Then they go home and watch something on a device. What else is there? Sure, you have to get the kids to school, and go to work yourself, if you happen to have a job, but beyond that…really? What is there?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Demotivations With Anne to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.