During a visit to one of our supermarkets, a French friend looked over a long shelf of apples. Seeing several varieties piled halfway to heaven, she remarked, “This is truly the land of plenty.” It truly is, but how, for so many of us, did it become the “land of discontent”? Of course, our political battles require challengers to go on and on about how bad things are and how they can fix what ails.
Gas prices are always too high. Violent crime is rampant, even in places that see almost none of it. So many voters buy into this dark vision, which is why politicians portray life in America as a daily struggle between good and evil.
But if you look at the millennia of human habitation — or even other parts of the world today — you’ll see societies haunted by rape and pillage, starvation, and deadly epidemics. The Great European Famine of the 14th century killed as much as 25% of some countries’ populations. On top of that, the bubonic plague brought death to as many as 30 million Europeans.
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Froma Harrop Modern medicine can conquer diseases that no amount of wealth or power could beat in centuries past. Smallpox and polio have been largely eradicated through vaccination. Tuberculosis and typhoid fever are now highly treatable with antibiotics.
So many take all this for granted. Our recent runup in egg prices, caused largely by the bird flu, was not the calamity portrayed in some media. A dozen eggs that cost $4.
75 in January 2023 were dow.