The 1970s were a tumultuous and negative decade for the United States. It saw a rise in political violence, from assassination attempts to terrorist bombings. President Gerald Ford was shot at twice in the span of a month, George Wallace was paralyzed by an assassin’s bullet, and left-wing terror groups like the Weather Underground engaged in mass bombings, riots, and jailbreaks. The decade had more than its share of political controversies, with the Watergate saga, the Pentagon Papers, the Church Committee revelations, and ABSCAM roiling the country. Institutional trust fell to an all-time low as America’s government was revealed as a corrupt, fraudulent, and self-interested mess.
Economically, the 70s were a lost decade, as rampant inflation combined with stagnating growth to crush the average American family. Populist efforts to contain the economic crisis via wage and price controls and a redoubling of unionization failed miserably. The 1970s were so bad in terms of crime that they became the cultural touchstone for a period of urban decay, serial murder, and mass criminality. Lawbreaking touched everywhere from the inner city to the suburbs and rural areas. The progressive remaking of the justice system that began in the 1960s came to fruition in the 70s, encouraging this lawlessness.
Things weren’t any better overseas. The decade saw the rise of détente, which allowed the USSR to consolidate its global power, expand its control over Eastern Europe, fund anti-Western causes, and engage in military adventurism. American power abroad was at a low ebb in the 1970s, exemplified by the humiliating military withdrawal from Vietnam and the total collapse of the South Vietnamese government. The decline of American confidence in the realm of foreign affairs created an atmosphere of chaos, one where the enemies of the West felt emboldened to belligerently pursue their interests. War came to Israel, Arab states forced an oil embargo on the US, Cuban fighters stoked pro-communist warfare in Africa, and the Shah of Iran was overthrown by a virulently anti-American theocrat. As a result, hundreds of Americans were taken hostage and held for more than a year by Islamist fanatics.
If any of this feels eerily familiar, you aren’t alone. The first four years of the 2020s have been an echo of the 1970s. President Jimmy Carter infamously labeled that decade one of profound “malaise” throughout the American body politic, but he could very well have been describing the nation today. In 2024, Americans polled by Gallup were far less happy than they were just a few years earlier, dropping the US out of the top 20 on the World Happiness Report for the first time. Many of the same factors driving this melancholy – particularly among those under 30 – undergirded the characteristic discontent of the 1970s.
The 2020s, inaugurated by the global pandemic, have been deeply influenced by heavy-handed activist governments. Personal freedoms were drastically curtailed for over two years, forcing children out of school, limiting autonomy around individual medical decisions, and punishing citizens for choices the government deemed ‘dangerous’ to public health. The massive expansion of government power, done by executive fiat and implemented by regulatory agencies, mirrored the administrative state explosion of the 1970s which initiated the bloat of today. Arbitrary bureaucratic diktats were handed down from on high and ordinary Americans were prodded to comply by an overweening elite partnership of corporate media and the state.
That same state vastly expanded its debt-financed spending to, in theory, curtail the economic impact of the pandemic. In actuality, the majority of the spending was meant for purely partisan purposes, promoting the pet causes of the progressive activist class under the guise of ‘Covid relief’. Unions were rewarded for their complicity in the pandemic shutdowns, student debt was socialized on the back of the taxpayer, and green constituencies were placated with greenbacks for their misguided priorities. Trillions of dollars of unnecessary spending drove the highest inflation the country had seen since the 1970s – ironically enough, caused by very similar government policies.
Paradoxically, the mailed fist of government tended to avoid targeting actual criminals and wrongdoers. Democratic politicians, including both members of the current presidential ticket, excused the most destructive riots in American history as a rational response to systemic injustice. Progressive prosecutors, funded by activist billionaires, have de facto decriminalized crime itself in major American cities, allowing violent repeat offenders to walk free. Many retailers have fled these deep-blue centers to reduce losses from rampant unprosecuted theft. Mass illegal migration has been tacitly encouraged by the federal government, destabilizing the border and creating disorder.
The long-dead specter of political violence has also returned with a vengeance. The 2020 riots were cheered as advancing a broader racial justice agenda. Those belligerent leftist demonstrations were followed by angry partisans from the MAGA right who stormed the Capitol seeking to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election. There have been individual murders motivated by politics, including one where a man shot his neighbor because he (falsely) believed he was a Democrat. Higher-profile figures are not immune. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family were targeted at their home by a potential assassin. America’s bastions of leftism, its cities and campuses, have been roiled by pro-Palestinian activists attacking recognizably Jewish targets. And, most redolent of the 1970s, former president Donald Trump was pierced by an assassin’s bullet.
These large-scale failures of domestic policy, along with the obvious corruption of elected officials and their families, have contributed to historic lows in trust in government. Only 16 percent of Americans say they trust the federal government most of the time, the main terms associated with politics were “divisive” and “corrupt,” and a strong majority of those polled had equally profound distaste for both parties. The decline of American politics into unseriousness has also manifested abroad.
The 2020s are shaping up to be the worst decade for American foreign interests since the 1970s. Two early catastrophic failures set the terrible tone. China was not held accountable for its starring role in the pandemic that killed over a million Americans. And in August 2021, America ignominiously abandoned its 20-year engagement in Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to regain control and anti-American terrorism to flourish unabated once again. That withdrawal came at the price of billions in military equipment, an immense amount of prestige, and more than a dozen American lives.
Since then, our enemies have been on the march, taking advantage of repeated displays of weakness and a misplaced fear of escalation. China has expanded its claims over the territory of its neighbors, enforcing these bogus prerogatives with military force and diplomatic threats – and not just towards Taiwan. Russia invaded Ukraine in the first major land conflict in Europe since the Second World War, slaughtering innocents, bombing cities, and seeking to annihilate its smaller neighbor’s independent existence. Iran, both directly and through its terrorist proxies, is carrying out the broadest and deadliest campaign against Israel since 1948. Russia and Hamas both hold American hostages. Even bit players like North Korea and Venezuela are getting in on the act, rattling the nuclear saber and crushing pro-democracy protests, respectively. Yet American leaders seem more infatuated with diplomacy and appeasement than confrontation and resolve.
To top this all off, the Democrats are presenting the nation with the most radical left-wing ticket since the “amnesty, abortion, acid” candidacy of George McGovern in 1972. Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, exemplify the problematic parallels to America’s last lost decade. Their preferred economic policies would accelerate inflation, increase debt, and undermine the private sector through flawed policies like price controls, all in an effort to reward progressive constituencies and attract the youth vote. Their record on public disorder and crime is far to the left; both were stalwart defenders of the 2020 rioting, for instance. They are climate change zealots who endorse Green New Deal-style policies. On cultural subjects, they are wildly out of the mainstream, seeking no limits on abortion or youth transgender medical interventions. They are in favor of a ‘see-no-evil’ approach to the illegal immigration crisis. And they are willing to sacrifice American interests abroad to satisfy progressive activists at home.
McGovern lost in one of the biggest electoral landslides in modern American history. He won a measly 17 electoral votes, falling to his Republican opponent in all but one state. Unlike that election, however, Harris’s opponent is an unpopular, unserious politician whose scandals are already out in the open for all to see. He is so controversial as to be entirely incapable of winning 400 electoral votes, much less 500. In short, Donald Trump is no Richard Nixon. And given the policy predilections of the current frontrunner, that reality could turn the 2020s from a 1970s redux to something far worse. And we won’t even have prog rock or bellbottoms to make up for it.