Let’s make America serious again

Having spent most of July and August off the grid while teaching in Poland and vacationing in Canada, I missed a lot of the Great Cracker Barrel Logo Fracas. But from what little I have observed of this absurd “debate” over whether removing a white man from the company logo constituted another corporate cave-in to wokery, which was followed by the equally inane “debate” over whether Cracker Barrel’s restoration of that figure to its logo was a further step toward the end of democracy, I have to wonder whether our country has become fundamentally unserious.

War is raging in Ukraine, a beleaguered, brutalized country that looks to the United States for support in its struggle for survival — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

The educrats who design the Scholastic Aptitude Test have decided that it’s asking too much of a generation whose attention spans have been formed by X, Facebook, and Instagram to comprehend a 750-word text (like this column), and will now ask wannabe college students to demonstrate mastery of 25-150-word texts — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

Masses of elementary school children are under-performing in basic literacy and computational skills — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

It will take three times as long to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge as it took to build the Empire State Building in 1930-31 — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

The Centers for Disease Control report that one in four American teenagers self-identifies as “LGBTQ” while the American Pediatric Association protests legal restraints on the mutilation of adolescent bodies — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

State legislatures in Texas and California take the (admittedly ancient) practice of gerrymandering congressional districts to previously unplumbed depths of partisan depravity, further undermining public confidence in our elections — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

The Secretary of Health and Human Services talks nonsense about autism and vaccines, further politicizes public health institutions, cuts crucial research funding, and vastly complicates the lives of responsible doctors by casting doubt on the most basic protocols for childhood disease prevention — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

“Influencer” Tucker Carlson welcomes discussion of the crackpot notion that the United States took the wrong side in World War II — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

Social media rants across the spectrum of political opinion define the day’s news while setting the terms of what is sometimes risibly called the “public discourse” — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

Foreign aid programs that provide critical food and medical assistance to developing countries are given the chop along with woke “aid” programs that never should have existed in the first place — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

The Voice of America is gutted; there are massive cuts in the funding of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other instruments by which the United States supports brave human rights activists in repressive countries — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

Article One of the Constitution seems to have been repealed in the minds of a critical mass of House and Senate members terrified of being “primaried” — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

U.S. defense manufacturing incapacities and clotted procurement procedures in the Pentagon combine to weaken deterrence in the Taiwan Straits and elsewhere — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

Once-great American cities descend further into dysfunction, blighting millions of lives that might have been creatively lived — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

$150 billion was spent on sports gambling in 2024 — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

Religious practice declines, the culture becomes ever more cynical and toxic, the innocence of children is destroyed by one false stroke on a keyboard — and Americans are obsessing over Cracker Barrel logos?

Perhaps I overreact. Perhaps the Great Cracker Barrel Logo Fracas was just another blip on the screens that dominate so many lives today. Perhaps most Americans pay no attention to such caterwauling, coming as much of it does from people for whom manufacturing clickbait is a “job.”

Perhaps.

But during my two months out of the country this summer, I was asked more than once, and by friends of America, what on earth is going on in the United States? Has the Great Republic lost the capacity for serious public debate? Why is American politics dominated by the screamers and the vulgarizers? Where are the adults in the room?

Those are serious questions. A morally serious country would take them seriously.