Look what they’ve done
There is no doubt in mind what’s causing that bizarre disconnect:
Last year, the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson summarized the national mood succinctly: Everything is terrible, but I’m fine.
He was reacting to research published by the Federal Reserve evaluating how confident Americans were about their own finances and the nation’s more broadly. What the data suggested was that there was a gap, that while three-quarters of Americans said their own finances were doing all right, only a quarter said the national economy was doing well.
On Monday, the Federal Reserve released the 2022 iteration of those same numbers. When Thompson was writing, there was a 54-point gap between confidence in Americans’ own finances and those of the nation generally and a 30-point gap with perceptions of the local economy.
Now, the gap with the local economy is 35 points, with fewer than 4 in 10 Americans saying their local economies are doing well. Only 2 in 10 Americans say the same of the national economy.
I include social media in that indictment. There is no material reason that Americans should be so sour about the economy. It’s because the media can’t stop saying things like “Inflation is down and jobs are up, sure —- but look at the price of celery! Where will it all end!” They can’t stop doing this. And it’s not just the economy:
[T]his pattern emerges elsewhere, too. Consider crime. In October, I noted the gap in perceptions of crime locally and nationally. Gallup recorded concern about increased crime at its highest level on record, but it was nonetheless the case that concern about rising crime nationally still easily outpaced it.
Crime is not up from a year ago:
A report, by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, examined trends in 35 cities and found that while homicides, gun assaults and reports of domestic violence declined slightly in 2022 compared with the year before, some property crimes have worsened. In some cities, car thefts in particular have spiked, the report found.
Nationwide, crime has been steadily declining for most of the last quarter century, starting in the early 1990s. And while the full picture on crime rates is nuanced, interpretation of the data has often become deeply politicized.
It’s also the case that there is more crime per capita in red states and rural areas but Republicans insist that this is a Blue State and urban problem. And that’s because their propaganda networks present it that way.
And then there’s this:
Bump’s analysis:
What’s interesting is that the timelines don’t always line up. Personal satisfaction has been diverging from satisfaction with the country since at least 2001. The gap between personal finances and the national economy widened in 2020. The gap in approval between Americans’ own members of Congress and Congress in general began to open dramatically after 2004.
One thread between these effects, though, is partisan polarization. Partisan satisfaction with the direction of the country is heavily dependent upon the party of the president. So is sentiment about the national economy. When I wrote about crime in October, I noted that much of the surge in concern about crime was driven by Republicans.
To this idea we can add the scale of the polarization. Consider that presidential approval ratings no longer measure approval in the way they once did because partisans tend to land at the extremes in their evaluations. Since the first term of Barack Obama, members of the president’s party have been strongly supportive of him, and members of the opposition strongly opposed. Approval ratings now move in narrow ranges, often driven mostly by the views of independents.
Perhaps, then, Thompson’s aphorism is better phrased as “I’m fine, but everyone else is terrible.” My bank accounts are holding up, but President Biden is ruining the economy. My member of Congress is effective, but the Republican majority in the House is destroying America. Crime here is fine, but Democratic mayors are letting criminals run amok. That sort of thing.
This depends not only on partisanship but on the nationalization of news. Local news outlets have shriveled in favor of large national ones. (Ahem.) Candidates for local office are as likely to be asked their opinions on national events and movements as they are about potholes. Attention has turned to the communal conversation, as have critiques. Given how unlikely Americans are to know people who disagree with their politics, the moderating effects of personal relationships play much less of a role.
There’s an unhappy implication if we assume these causes are to blame: Fixing the gap between personal and national perceptions means fixing America’s broader divides. In other words, it means probably not fixing the gap any time soon.
One step would be for the right to wake the fuck up and realize they are being lied to.