{"id":33644,"date":"2017-01-21T09:36:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-21T17:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=33644"},"modified":"2019-01-20T10:33:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-20T18:33:00","slug":"the-american-carnage-donald-trumps-bleak-vision-of-the-disunited-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=33644","title":{"rendered":"The American Carnage: Donald Trump’s Bleak Vision Of The Disunited States"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone listening to Donald Trump’s inauguration speech<\/a><\/strong> must have thought he was talking about a different country. His description of the United States was dripping with the horror of a nightmarish, dystopian society. He actually used the phrase “American Carnage”<\/em> to illustrate his vision of the state of the nation he’s inheriting from President Obama.<\/p>\n

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In order to have such a depressing perspective, Trump needs to severely distort reality. By any objective measure the country is currently in remarkably healthy condition. It recovered from a near depression in 2008, and is now experiencing broad-based prosperity. The economy is firing on all cylinders with a stock market that has tripled in the past eight years. The unemployment rate dropped from a high of 10.1 percent to a historically sound 4.9 percent. Bankruptcies and foreclosures have declined precipitously. More people are covered by health insurance than ever before.<\/p>\n

That’s not to say that there aren’t still some stubborn problems that need to be resolved. There will always be room for improvement. But Trump’s speech portrayed the country as a hell hole that was barely livable. Some of the rhetoric he disgorged can only come from an aberrant imagination:<\/p>\n