Is America dying?

OPINION:

Is the United States about to limp off the stage of history? The answer is yes — and no. 

Doom and gloom seem to be the order of the day. According to the latest Rasmussen Survey (for the week ending Dec. 30, 2021), less than 30% of likely voters believe the country is heading in the right direction. In an Axios poll taken around the same time, more than half of adult Americans said they are fearful of the year ahead.

Admittedly, there’s plenty to be anxious about: chaos at the border, inflation at a near 40-year high, 12 major cities with a record number of homicides last year, school children indoctrinated with anti-Americanism, serious efforts underway to nationalize elections and abolish representative government.

Many Americans don’t think we’ll last another three years. History proves them wrong. America is a success story that’s always on the verge of failure. Yet we survive — sometimes inexplicably — and against all odds.

Since July 4, 1776, America has been a lost cause. 

After the Declaration of Independence was signed, we suffered a string of humiliating defeats until George Washington’s Christmas Day attack on Trenton. That year, the Continental Army marched to its winter encampment in rags, leaving bloody footprints in the snow.
 
That we survived four years of Civil War, with 620,000 dead, is another miracle. In the North, a large part of the public didn’t want to fight, forcing the Union to institute conscription for the first time in our history. The South had better generals and won most of the important battles up to Gettysburg. Yet we came out of it one nation.

World War II should have broken us: Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, most of Europe and Asia conquered by the time we got into the war. Well into 1942, our armed forces were starved for weapons and ammunition. In 1940, recruits drilled with broom handles because there weren’t enough rifles to go around. 

If the Battle of Midway, the D-Day landings or the Battle of the Bulge had gone differently (or, if Germany or Japan had developed the A-bomb first), we might be eating sushi every day of the week and washing it down will lager beer.

The Great Depression, Vietnam, the Carter malaise, 9/11 – we’re always on life-support. But we always manage to pull through. After former President Jimmy Carter came Ronald Reagan, and it was morning in America.

Our enemies have consistently underestimated us, starting with the British during the Revolution, who thought they were facing a ragtag army of peasants and the rebellion would be over by Christmas of the year it started. 

The Kaiser couldn’t see how America would change the equation in 1917. 

In 1941, Hitler thought American men were all playboys whose chief interests were dancing and drinking — a combination of Fred Astaire and W.C. Fields. He probably had second thoughts about it, as he awaited the end in the smoldering ruins of Berlin four years later.

We starved at Valley Forge. The evacuation of Saigon (recently reenacted in Kabul) was humiliating. After 9/11, the nation was shell-shocked but determined. Through it all, we are still the last man standing. Taking on America is like marching into Russia in the dead of winter.

I don’t have to list the problems we face today. But I’m convinced we will endure — until God finds a better instrument for his purpose.

The spirit of ’76 yet burns in the hearts of many of us — the ideal of a republic guided by a Constitution meant to protect free men and restrain only government, entrepreneurship and a market economy, and the faith of our fathers.

With this foundation and trust in the Almighty, better days are coming. 

The administration’s approval rating will reach new lows this year. Press secretary Jen Psaki will continue to do standup comedy. In the Democratic Party, the war between the hacks and the hard-core will intensify. The exodus to red states from blue will accelerate, and Democratic cities (the bastions of the party’s power) will remain on suicide watch.

Even the mainstream media, big tech bucks and voter fraud won’t be enough to save this president and his party.

In the coming election, bet on red. And always bet on America.

• Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer and syndicated columnist.