No, Really: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

I can't believe we have to have this discussion.

Housekeeping: I’m taking a couple of weeks off from the Thursday livestream. We’ll be back in mid-April.

---

Los Angeles, on March 21, 2020. All 40 million residents of California were on March 19 ordered to stay at home indefinitely in a bid to battle the coronavirus pandemic in the nation's most populous state. (Photo by APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images)

1. My New Hobby

Because I enjoy lecturing to the void, I have undertaken a new hobby. Every day on Threads, I post an image of the front page of the New York Times from four years ago.

The idea is to beat The People over the head with the brute fact that four years ago, the situation in Donald Trump’s America was terrible.

Here, for example, is the NYT front page from March 21, 2020:

Let’s check out those top stories:

• Millions of Americans unable to leave their homes.

• A president creating chaos with his conflicting, nonsensical responses.

• Hospitals overrun by patients and lacking the equipment to treat them all.

• A TRILLION DOLLAR emergency spending bill.

• People out of work cutting back on food consumption in order to feed their kids.

This sounds very bad!

---

Here is the front page from today’s New York Times:

It’s not all puppy dogs and ice cream, but here’s what passes for bad news in Joe Biden’s America:

• Lara Loomer is in Panama creating clickbait content for Twitter.

• A mayor in Hungary built a bridge to nowhere.

• A Texas law is before an appeals court.

• Democrats are trying to keep third-party candidates off the ballot.

• Republicans want to cut U.N. aid to Gaza.

I mean, that’s not paradise, but it seems about a million times better than where we were four years ago?

---

Look, I get that this is all anecdata. The front page of the New York Times is neither a scientific measuring device nor a perfect barometer of societal mood. We’re only looking at two snapshots in time. Yadda yadda yadda.

But I gave a boatload of actual data on this question two weeks ago. No one seemed to notice.

And also: The cumulative weight of this stuff—when you look at the 2020 front page every single day—seems massive enough to create its own gravity well. I mean, yesterday’s front page from four years ago was even worse than today’s. Have a look: