In fact, the past twenty years has been a litany of challenges, each of which dented American confidence and which in aggregate have altered what was once a preternaturally upbeat and optimistic country (albeit one with vicious divisions) into a perpetually pessimistic one. The stock market internet bubble burst of 2000; the botched “hanging chad” election of 2000; the attacks of 9/11; another stock market crash and corporate scandals such as Enron in 2002; the Iraq invasion of its aftermath in 2003-2004; revelations of metadata spying and torture in US military prisons in 2005-2006; the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007-2008 followed by the Great Recession of 2008-2010; a few decent economic years from 2013 to 2016 which nonetheless didn’t prevent the rise of Donald Trump in 2016; the acrimony of the first Trump years and then the pandemic in 2020 and riots and protests over race followed by the contested election and January 6.

Put in that context, the dyspepsia about how we are doing economically makes more sense. So too does that fact that yes, in the past decades, the rich have gotten far richer while the middle has tended to mosey along and the bottom has struggled as it always has. And the rise of China as an economic challenge to American global hegemony has also discombobulated a people and a country that had long defined itself—and prided itself—for being at the top of the global economic pyramid.