# Persistent Problems By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2022-10-07 Problems persist unless resolved. One may get a momentary reprieve, but eventually, the problem will return. Sometimes the respite lasts years, maybe even generations. Eventually, however, the unresolved problem will remerge, different in terms of context, but essentially the same. American society is marked by such persistent problems.    On October 1, 2022, Jimmy Carter turned 98. He is both the oldest living president as well as the longest-lived president. On July 15, 1979, then President Carter gave a televised speech on the _Crisis of Confidence_ in America. This became known as Carter’s “Malaise Speech.” His assessment from 43 years ago is worth considering today as it seems to identify a persistent social problem we have yet to resolve. As President Carter explained there is: >_A fundamental threat to American democracy…It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America…Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations…Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy…Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that pilling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose…This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning…We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr…The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual._ A little over a year later Ronald Reagan was elected president. For many in the United States, the 1980s and 1990s suggested that the “Carter Malaise” was over. Since 9/11 there has been increasing social cues suggesting that the unresolved crisis of confidence is a persistent national problem. Perhaps now worse than before. Are Americans seeking “honest answers, not easy answers,” or are we seeking the self-satisfaction that comes from being told what we want to hear? Ultimately we will know by how long our collective crisis of confidence persists. #### Related Items [[Politics]] [[American]] [[Crisis]] [[Confidence]] [[Democracy]] [[Problem Solving]]