The Unraveling Continues.

Poll shows Americans' values shifting | Watch (msn.com)

This is an interview based on a survey about American "values."  The reference points were 1998 and 2023, which are 25 years apart.

All of the things that have deteriorated, which is more or less everything, are socially hopeful, and the kinds of things that bind people together, and lead them to want what would colloquially be called a "better world."  Or at least a better country.

In 2023, only one thing is of greater interest than it was 25 years ago, and that's money.  Money is solipsistic.  Many people with a good deal of money have more of it than they need, or can use, or sometimes even want.  They just can't stop pursuing it, as this survey shows, and it has become the equivalent of an addiction.

One of the things I always say is that the vast, vast, vast majority of people who get money are not counterfeiters: they don't create their own money.  The money they get they take from other people, and they ought to think about that (and about the other people).  The linked survey says they're not thinking about any of that, or about anything, except getting money.  They have no sense of attachment to others, or to the value of something like college, which leads to expanded interests and experiences and ambitions.  They're uniquely no longer thinking even about their own children.  More people now can't be bothered to want children, and they're no longer confident that their children will come to be better off than they are.  The unspoken presumption is that they don't particularly want their children to be better off than they are.

So, that's what's happened to Americans' "values" in the last 25 years.  The interview says some of it started with Reagan, and it accelerated (wildly) with Trump.  But whenever, it's pretty pathetic.  It's hard to avoid the conclusion that so are we.