5) Vast swaths of the entertainment industry and mass media are dying.
Sure, television is much, much worse than it used to be. Movies have decayed to the point where most of them are remakes or taken from comic books. Pop music is algorithmic dreck. Magazines and newspapers seem designed for retarded fifth-graders. Who cares? They’re dying! Huzzah for all the unemployed Hollyweird and music-industry types. Raspberries at the unemployed mass-media goons who have profited from keeping Americans ignorant. I look forward to seeing the whole lot of these tasteless wretches in breadlines.

6) People are sick of wars…and hippies.
The early 21st century’s antiwar movement was right, but for all the wrong reasons. With a few exceptions they weren’t against the wars because they were useless expenditures of blood and treasure. They were against the wars because they hate rednecks who serve in the military. Such unpleasant antiwar types made neoconservatives look like reasonable statesmen in comparison and probably made the war in Iraq possible. Most of these numskulls were silent as the Obama Administration expanded our wars to Yemen and Libya. I find it heartening that despite”€”or perhaps because”€”these loudmouths have shut up, most Americans were against the war in Libya and are against the one proposed in Syria.

7) Illegal aliens are going home.
Sure, this is mostly because we’re broke and a few states decided to enforce the laws, but they’re still leaving.

8) Violent crime isn’t that bad.
Violent-crime rates peaked around 1992. They have been declining since then. I don’t know why, though I assume it has something to do with the fact that the US has the world’s largest absolute and per-capita prison population. I’d prefer returning to the days of yore when crime was much lower than it is now and we were not imprisoning people at Soviet Union rates, but I”€™m glad that things aren’t as bad as they used to be.