It was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who wrote, “The only constant in life is change.” People weren’t comfortable with change when he wrote that, some 2,600 years ago, and we’re still not. Sometimes for good reason.
Any of us who have lived a while have seen a lot of change. Think about the world: I spent time in South Africa during apartheid, in the old Soviet Union before it fell apart, and in Hong Kong before it reverted from British to Chinese control. During the Cold War, I traveled for some weeks over a couple of years in communist-controlled Eastern Europe – as we used to say, “behind the Iron Curtain.”
All those places have changed. And I wonder what will be said a generation or two from now about this America, which is changing so dramatically, so quickly. We might be under-estimating just now how profound the changes that are coming will be.
One example: I was a newspaper editor for many years, and I recall when almost everybody read a paper. What’s changed isn’t just that folks today don’t subscribe to a print newspaper. No, the big difference is that more people care less these days about the news. Only about 38 percent of Americans say they pay attention to the news most of the time – a number that dropped by one-fourth in less than a decade. That trend is unlikely to reverse, so even fewer people will know what’s going on.
And since a growing share of content is delivered by algorithm – that is, based on your prior digital experience – most Americans already encounter only information that matches their interests and biases. Increasingly, people don’t value independent and authoritative news sources as much as they grab what’s presented by essentially propaganda platforms. Especially in today’s younger generations, what people know comes from the alternative media environment of influencers and personalities: podcasters, You Tubers and Tik Tokers and such.
If you want to get a sense of how that will change America, there’s a hint in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that incorporates a huge chunk of President Trump’s agenda. There’s a lot in that one-foot-tall piece of legislation that polls say most Americans don’t support. It will take away healthcare from 12 million Americans and cut food aid for millions. It will end tax credits tied to clean energy, including those that have made electric vehicles more affordable. It will increase the federal debt by more than $3.3 trillion – and higher debt inevitably translates into more expensive mortgages, car loans and credit card bills.
Not good, in the eyes of most Americans. But because of the way information moves around these days, most folks don’t know that the legislation is filled with stuff they don’t like. That’s not unusual: Generally nowadays, voters tend to not know how much they don’t know.
This imperils our future. A democracy depends upon voters understanding what’s at stake as they cast ballots. Unfortunately, not only are today’s voters misinformed by what gets our attention in the digital world, but the rising generations aren’t getting a good start. That is, we’re not doing a good job of training tomorrow’s citizens: In the most recent comparison of the educational achievement of 15-year-olds in developed countries, the U.S. ranked 35th in combined math, science and reading – way behind Singapore and Taiwan, for example, and just a bit below Vietnam, Norway and Malta.
Beyond education, there’s this: Research has shown that throughout history, democracies are sustained best by a strong middle class – which is declining in America. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, two-thirds of all American families lived secure lives on a single paycheck; now, only 45 percent of us are middle-class, and it typically takes two jobs in a household to maintain that lifestyle. Over the past half-century, $50 trillion has been transferred from the middle class to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. That wealth transfer will speed along thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill.
I’ve got to believe that if people knew all that – if they were better informed, starting as schoolkids, and continuing into adulthood – they wouldn’t stand for it. In years to come, thanks to what Congress and the White House are doing right now, so much is going to change: healthcare will decline, scientific advancement will slow, educational achievement will drop, environmental degradation will be speeded; more wealth will flow upward; climate change will force destruction, migration and resource shortages.
Those changes are almost certainly coming. But too many people don’t know it, either because they aren’t paying attention or because they’re paying attention to the wrong stuff – including what’s served up to them by algorithms and artificial intelligence and online personalities. So they don’t see it coming.
Which is why we who know and care about all this need to do whatever we can to advance the cause of truth-telling in the media; to stand for rigorous improvement in our schools, and to work for honest and clear-eyed decision-makers in public life. If we fail to do that, then that one constant – change – will be only change for the worse. We shouldn’t stand for that.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
