I love my country. I’m ashamed of my country. I’m deeply afraid of where my country is going.
The United States is facing a terrible moment. We have an ignoramus for a president. Our country is competing (poorly) with China to be the predominant superpower. AI is poised to shatter the middle class job market bringing about either a golden age of leisure (highly unlikely) or another Great Depression (unfortunately much more likely). Humanity itself faces an existential threat of climate change. And in this moment the American public is more divided, more fractured, more untrusting of one another than at any other time in my lifetime. Never before have I heard people talk so openly, and so glibly, about the prospect of a new civil war.
That, in a nutshell, is why I’m starting this blog. To bear witness to the moment, to try to understand it, to try, in my own little way, to help us collectively work through it. But to do any of that, I need a place to organize my thoughts. I needed a place to collect information. I need a place, perhaps, to scream into the void. This blog is my attempt to create such a place for myself.
My eldest daughter is in her first year of college and is taking her first sociology class. She just shared with me that they are currently learning about the sociological imagination: connecting personal troubles with public issues. That, ultimately, is whatI hope to do here: through the lens of my personal experience, interpret the historical and structural forces acting upon us all. I hope you’ll come along with me and find some value in the exercise.