I read the Ehrenreich link – I actually don’t agree and further don’t think it’s useful for predicting the future of the U.S.
Merely thinking positive thoughts may not be sufficient, but it is more likely to lead to good results than rampant negativity.
Think about when the U.S. went down to build the Panama Canal after the French gave up. Someone with the attitude “this obviously can’t be done, it’s too hard, and ‘bad things could happen'” isn’t going to get the job done. They’ve failed before they even started.
Certainly it was a very daunting task, and yet once we set our mind to it, applied technology (and competition), things started proceeding very rapidly.
During WWII, Eisenhower said (paraphrasing) “I do more for the war effort by just walking around with a smile and saying things are going well than almost anything else I could do”. Seems to have worked out pretty well for him.
Think about CEO’s of companies. The good ones are relentlessly optimistic, even when it is patently obvious things are bad. It can actually be annoying. But they have to do that. Think of the impact on the morale of their company (and the then resultant outcome) if they acted the other way.
There’s an old saying that if you bet against America you will lose. Now perhaps the doom and gloomers are right and the “proverb”, while correct so many times in the past, no longer applies (and never will again). For some reason “it’s different this time”. Yeah. Good luck with that bet.
