Americans gloomier than ever during Trump’s 'golden age'

During his speeches, President Donald Trump often describes his second presidency as a new "Golden Age" for the United States. Trump claims that the U.S. suffered an unprecedented decline during Joe Biden's presidency but has enjoyed a major rebirth since his return to the White House, although liberal economist Paul Krugman — a blistering Trump critic — is quick to point out that the U.S. enjoyed record-low unemployment under Biden.

Salon's Heather Digby Parton examines Trump's "Golden Age" claims in an article published on February 12, emphasizing that Americans on the whole are feeling extremely pessimistic.

"He genuinely believes he can change reality simply by relentlessly stating something as fact in the face of all evidence to the contrary," Parton says of Trump. "His repeated insistence, though, that the country has never been as successful as it is today has so far landed with a thud. We are, in fact, living in an historic time: Americans have rarely been more pessimistic about the future. According to the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, Americans who believe they will have high-quality lives in five years declined to the lowest level since the organization began asking the question 20 years ago."
Parton continues, "Those who believe that both their current and future lives are good enough to be classified as 'thriving' dropped to 48 percent. If this is America's Golden Age, it doesn't appear to be that people are seeing it. In fact, the right-wing polling organization Rasmussen asked the question outright and found bad news for the president: Only 27 percent of those surveyed see this as the country's 'Golden Age,' as compared to 58 percent who do not."

Parton points out that according to polls, "even Republicans are feeling pessimistic, despite all of Trump's happy talk." But she argues that the U.S. might experience an actual "golden age" if it moves on from Trump and the MAGA movement.

"The right's cramped vision of American greatness, with its sour, white nationalist ideology and its cruel authoritarian methods, is a good reason to be pessimistic," Parton writes. "But the resilience of the American people, from Minneapolis to Milan, is telling a different story. For all of our gloom about the future, it appears we aren't giving up. Perhaps the Golden Age really is upon us after all. It's just not the one Donald Trump thinks it is."

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