Continuing my last ‘Everything is awful’ post.
No 9: An increase in violent crime, broadly since the 19th Century. Semi-broadly since the 1950s. Acutely since 2019. The way we’ve chosen to structure our society has consequences. While certainly other factors apply here, crime is way less common, even in urban areas than it was in the 19th Century. The world of the 1950s was far more dangerous than the world a mere century before, and though this is difficult to prove statistically a cursory glance at literature of either period will show you that people feared crime a lot less in 1850 than they did in 1950. Post-1950s the rise in crime is a matter of public record. The crime rate since the 1950s to 2016 doubled (even though it improved after the all-time high in the 80s). Old 1980s crime rates seem ripe to appear again, after crime rates surged in 2020 and continue to soar in 2021.
No 10: Corruption of Academia to become politicized to the point of uselessness. Examples are too numerous to cite. The politicization of academia has gone so far as to make Academia essentially a bastion of propaganda rather than a center of any real thought. The endless politicization has turned the Humanities into a wasteland, and is well on its way to corrupting STEM. Without the ability to create theories that go against established political orthodoxies, our academic world is failing.
No 11: The Political Corruption of most Managerial Institutions. Woke Capital, Woke Government. Every unelected position of power has become completely infected with Wokeism, whether in the public sector, or large business. Large bodies of power are increasingly expected to fall in line with the single-story state.
No 12: The Death of Free Speech. This has occured in two ways. In Europe/Canada/Australia this has taken the role of active hate speech laws which police what you can say. In the US Woke Capital has become the arbiter of speech, with being fired from your job becoming the normal punishment for adhering to dissident views.
No 13: The end of any kind of discussion within society. Related to above, not only are politically incorrect views stifled, but our culture has become hyper-conformist with debate and controversy becoming looked down upon.
No 14: The politicized management of the economy for short-term gains rather than long-term health. Inflation has become a huge issue, as political gain for politicians has started to outweigh the actual health of the economy. Both 2008 and 2021 are cases that show an economy beyond all health and sanity flailing to survive.
No 15: The large-scale failure of racial integration. Islamic immigrants have failed to adapt to European society. US society is not substantially less integrated in terms of race than it was in the 60s despite numerous laws and efforts we’ve made to change the status that. So far the only promising note on that front is the integration of Hispanics (who are already mostly Western anyway) and Asians (who share a similar cultural heritage). Even then, that was because Hispanics and Asians did most of the hard work of integrating themselves, not because our society did a great job integrating them.
No 16: The complete disparity of liberal/progressive society to readdress racial disparities in achievement. Whether you blame welfare like Thomas Sowell does, or race, like the Alt-Right does, or racism, like the Progressive Left does, no one can argue that our attempts to readdress inequalities over the past sixty years have been a failure. No-one would need to play a blame game in a world where that where the Great Society was successful.
No 17: The (Pre-Covid) decline in American health through obesity, opioids, and suicide. This one is widely attested and not controversial.
No 18: The general decline in IQ across the developed world (post 1999) which can likely be attributed to various factors including pretty much every other point on this list.
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i am not saying nice articles (part I & II), because of its negative content. But these are good criteria to justify your thesis (society getting worse). my question is: do you have any sources ? and if so, can I take your content and maybe translate it into German ?
greetings