... On the eve of the 1976 election, President Gerald Ford wanted to hold a motorcade parade in Grand Rapids, where he grew up ... filled with boarded-up buildings ... a downtrodden place ...
America on the eve of 2026 feels an awful lot like Grand Rapids in 1976. There’s a palpable sense that the country is struggling, if not starting to fail. It isn’t only the sorry state of big cities. It’s the state of the nation’s schools as kids fall behind in basic math and reading. It’s the state of the body politic as division and violence spread. It’s the sorry feeling that we’re a nation without a rudder, drifting toward inevitable decline. According to Pew Research, about half of Americans say the U.S. can’t solve many of its important problems. ...
More here.
