America Hit Rock Bottom In 2022, But Washington Can’t Rehabilitate Us

Washington chaos, chaos at the airport, holiday hangovers: It was all familiar enough for the first month in 2023. The cracks in our walls are what Americans might not be as familiar with.

Sure, Americans have long felt a decline — maybe a few shifts in the foundations; the yearly polls on trust in major institutions reflect that well enough. An uncle might say, “Wall Street’s a bunch of crooks!” Or a neighbor who notices. “Washington politicians are only in it for themselves,” Or even an old classmate, who thinks. “Colleges are just a bunch of crazy activists these days,” However, the majority of complaints were resolved by the individuals who filed them. All was still working well enough.

And then it didn’t.

While politicians “the experts,” and their friends in corporate media managed to muddy the waters in the first year of lockdowns, by 2021 everyday Americans felt like they’d earned the right to wonder why their kindergarteners were in masks, or their local teachers still refused to teach. Modern homeschooling has flourished like nothing before. Meanwhile, enrollments in Catholic schools have increased for the very first time in decades.

The easy and pervasive idea that you could drop your kids off at school and expect they’d get an education like you did back in the day was dead. With the assumption that hospital administrators could be trusted, came the notion that you could also trust your favorite news anchor. The truth is that even pastors and funeral director stood in the way for the business and the salvation of lives, death, and the soul.

These were people who thought, or institutions. These were, however, just people. “unprecedented times” “we’re all in this together.” “The pendulum will swing back,” Americans predict with confidence. “This craziness will pass.”

Today, in the first month of 2023, we don’t have the luxury of thinking it’s all going to get better. We are far from the year America shifted course and settled down. “normalcy,” 2022 was the year that the systems behind the scenes we all depended on began to fail.

People had to struggle to purchase a car. Baby formula was moved behind locked doors, where cigarettes were once sold. Because baby aspirin and simple medicines were so in high demand, neighbors and friends worked together to supply those most in need. Container ships became a backwater for weeks as their contents rotted. The American economy’s lifeline was threatened by a shortage of diesel.

Even if you don’t have an infant or a child looking for medicine, even if you didn’t see the ships lining up the California coast or the Chesapeake Bay, or missed the growing unease in the trucking industry, you might have noticed the cost of meat fluctuating so greatly that some local restaurants charged “market price” for chicken fingers. Perhaps you noticed basic condiments were out of stock at the local fast food restaurants. Perhaps a friend sent you a text asking for help finding a specific formula for his baby.