let's figure out how to celebrate when good things happen

also buy an american flag and wave it around

In 2022, Biden and the Dems passed the Inflation Reduction Act. It included a ton of money to fight climate change, although estimates differ on how much (the highest estimate cited in the Wikipedia article is over $1T). Here is a picture summarizing some of the spending.

This money is now being spent to open up plants making climate-friendly tech, or helping people buy EVs. The IRA by itself is estimate to have a large effect on overall US emissions, getting us much closer to the Paris 2023 target of 50% less emissions than in 2005. In the optimistic scenario, we get to 44% out of 50% just because of the IRA.

This is happening while the American economy is growing rapidly and experiencing normal rates of inflation.

And yet, if you log online and read about politics, you would think everything is falling apart. I think part of the reason for this is that elite discourse is largely done either by conservative hacks or highly educated left-leaning people. The conservative hacks obviously are going to say everything is terrible under Joe Biden. And paradoxically so are the highly educated left-leaners!

I think part of the reason for this is that the highly educated left-leaners (of which I am one) go through the elite university system, which in the social sciences outside of economics and the humanities promotes a largely critical view of *everything*. It’s all about deconstructing the default narrative, figuring out why the conventional wisdom is wrong, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, being contrarian is often an excellent strategy for doing research. It’s nice to take the radical position that the default thing everyone thinks is wrong somehow. I have written papers like this! It’s just that if you do some research you will find out that your contrarian ideas end up in dead ends 90 or 95 or 99 percent of the time. Why? Because the default is often there for a good reason!

Same with our default narrative about ourselves as Americans. We live in the most powerful country, ever. Despite the doomsayers, we are not fading and we continue to be the economic engine of the world. We are also unique is that we are the world’s superpower but we value things like freedom, human rights, and democracy. When we project power, we often do it to get people to have democratic systems of government. Our values are situated in the tradition of humanism and the Enlightenment, and that is a big reason why we are so successful: because when you recognize people’s rights, they become engaged citizens and contribute to a thriving society in all kinds of ways.

That is the most apple pie narrative we have about ourselves. And it is something that highly educated people are taught to tear apart for years of their educations. You’ll hear arguments against America being good that rely on things like racial injustice, foreign intervention, and the presence of reactionaries in the US. These claims generally all have merit when considered narrowly: it is true that there is racial discrimination particularly against Black Americans and that that is bad and we should work hard to end the discrimination. But then we are often taught to take a second implicit step that this means the American project is doomed AND that this means other systems, somewhere, are better. I think this implicit step is wrong in both cases—we are not perfectly just as a society but we have made real strides over time, and continue to make strides, which is good. We should keep working at it, and recognize that it is good to live in a society where such progress can be made. On the second case: what other system is better? We may eventually invent one, but we haven’t yet! To be a little snarky and a little grim, how is China doing with rights for ethnic and racial minorities?

I think this criticism-training in school teaches people a default stance of trying to figure out why things that are obviously good aren’t, actually. And I think that in turn leads to people not knowing how to celebrate when good things, like the IRA, happen.

It is fundamentally awesome that we did some politics in 2019 and 2020, and then elected a government that took power in 2021, and then they passed a giant climate investment that doubles as a green tech investment. That is how things should work. It should help us all sleep a little easier that things are kind of functional right now. The maliciousness of the Bush administration, the gridlock of the Obama administration, and the insanity of the Trump administration have all, after diligent work that we should all feel good about, given way to a functional 4 years that saw the fulfillment of longstanding progressive desires like capping drug prices and limiting carbon emissions.

And yet, we have sociology professors saying stuff like this:

My feeling is that in a sane world, the kids would be seeing an obviously awful situation in Gaza and protest. That’s great, that makes sense. But then their sociology professor would put the conflict in some context for them, help them understand that the conflict is longstanding and that the American government is actually working very hard to resolve the situation (and that, as of this writing, there is a peace deal on the table and Hamas is the only party holding out!). And then the sociology professor would give them some empirically-backed advice on building a successful protest movement that could help students avoid counterproductive protests.

But we don’t live in that world just yet, even though I think we will get there someday. I think in the process, I would urge everyone reading this to consider stepping back and looking at our moment in history in a longer lens: the progress we have made, and the possibility for continued progress. And I would suggest that perhaps criticism is not always the correct default strategy. Sometimes stuff is good, actually.