The Broken Story of America That Led Trump Back to Power

When President Donald Trump delivered his second inaugural address on Monday, January 20, he preserved a tradition of national mythmaking that has only served Americans poorly. Beyond the expected theatrics, Trump declared that the United States was “the greatest civilization in history,” despite being the most unequal nation with the lowest life expectancy, even among the Western democracies today. And despite his record victory in November’s election, the president asserted that “the entire nation is quickly uniting behind our agenda.”

What is truly remarkable about this moment, however, is that there is a rare undercurrent of agreement among Americans today. The consensus comes in the form of deep pessimism about our most cherished national story. A recent WSJ/NORC poll of American voters found that only 36 percent still believe in the American dream largely defined by the idea that hard work breeds success and upward mobility. This result represents a significant drop from 2012, when, even in the shadow of the Great Recession that gutted millions of families, 52 percent of Americans remained committed to their dream story.

The deep feelings of despair and disenchantment in the United States are not just the result of bad trade deals, corporate concentration, or America’s withdrawal from social and civic engagement. They cannot be described solely by the government’s failure to protect citizens and consumers from the exploding cost of basic necessities like housing, health care, education and child care. The national gloom stems from something deeper, particularly the torment of a supposedly coherent national story about opportunity that is encoded in culture, politics, and civic life.

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Historically, being an American (at least for some) meant the chance to live free from the titles, class statics, and feudal baggage of the Old World. Even before the term was coined, the American dream of being socially mobile through hard work sprinkled diligence with a special merit-driven magic that enticed and frustrated millions. From the Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers across the frontier to today’s fractious culture, gig economy, and tattered safety net by design, the essential American folk tale has blended labor relentlessness for destiny, autonomy for self-realization, and success with moral value.

The problem with this story is that it makes the struggle shameful. Take for example the nation’s cumbersome public assistance programs, which are intentionally cluttered with bureaucracy. A 2020 audit by the Government Accountability Office, for example, found that about 8,000 Americans file for bankruptcy and ten thousand more people die each year while awaiting a disability benefits decision (or appeal) from from the Social Security Administration. “The administrative burdens themselves are, in some sense, a deliberate test of merit,” Dr. Heather Hahn, associate vice president of the nonpartisan Urban Institute think tank, said of U.S. social insurance programs. . “The assumption is that only a person who is truly, desperately in need, who truly has no other choice, will endure whatever is required. This adds to this merit.

Meanwhile, in public narratives, Americans who fail to make ends meet by caring for loved ones or fighting for terrible jobs are just people without sufficient ambition. “I don’t think hard-working Americans should pay for all the social services aimed at people who could make broader contributions and should instead remain couch potatoes,” former Florida Rep. Matt once said Gaetz in 2023 while lobbying against anti-poverty programs.

Likewise, an individual drowning in student debt is never someone who took out a loan to attend nursing school or dropped out of an engineering program to care for an ailing parent. It’s always a slacker or a wastrel who, in the words of Senator Ted Cruz, “studied queer pet literature” or a “lazy barista who wasted seven years on the university” and who can’t “stop smoking for a minute”. On the other hand, those who succeed are considered virtuous and enlightened. Referring to the 2016 electoral map, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that “all that red in the middle, where Trump won, what the map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of American GDP. national product. So I won the optimistic, diversified, dynamic places that move forward.

While the discourse around opportunity has remained largely staid, the American experience has deteriorated from a bootstrapping approach to a white-knuckle experiment. Over the past 45 years, the size of the U.S. economy has doubled and American workers have become 81% more productive while their wages have increased only 29%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. (Workers of color and workers without college degrees have seen their real wages decline.) Today, medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in America, and baby formula is one of the most stolen products in the world. display. According to a Brookings Institution study, 44% of Americans work in jobs considered low-wage.

“I did everything I was supposed to do,” Nakitta Long, a single mother of two with a master’s degree in North Carolina, told me of being unable to find a job that could provide for the needs of his family. “Why isn’t it simple?”

These are some of the crazy, faith-destroying headwinds that have derailed arguments for preserving democracy for people already abandoned by a democracy where hard work doesn’t pay.

These are the same winds that brought President-elect Donald Trump back to power. And we learn once again that, from the Capitol Rotunda to the displaced communities of Southern California, winds can carry fires very easily.

Excerpt adapted from 99% PERSPIRATION by Adam Chandler. Reprinted with permission from Pantheon Books, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright (c) 2025 by Adam Chandler.