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A sketch of our nation's politics would show the minority conservative Republican Party taking most of the policy initiatives, and the liberal Democrats, also a minority but a more numerous one, trying to reclaim authority without imitating the Republicans. The President is Ronald Reagan, whose name may mean little more to you than that of Grover Cleveland, who was President in 1886, means to us. That is the sad fate of most of our national leaders. The Apache warrior Geronimo was captured in the years of Cleveland's presidency. If there were any doubt as to who is the better remembered, no parachutist, as he jumps, ever yells "Cleveland!"
Our economic health is robust for the upper classes but is shadowed by a huge trade deficit and a colossal fiscal debt. Japan is turning America into its private shopping district. Taiwan is not far behind. This year South Korea drove up in a car that sells for half the price of American cars. The economy is shadowed more deeply by a pitiless discrepancy between rich and poor that has shrunk the middle class, historically the nation's bedrock. That discrepancy widened in recent years because of an emphasis on private interest over public responsibility that too often took the form of a clogged bureaucracy. One is told that these impulses run in cycles. Should we believe it? Much of the rest of the world too is divided between those bloated by food and those bloated by hunger. One cannot imagine that this fissure will have continued to grow for a century without tearing the nation's body and soul apart.
Our view of foreign governments and our relation to them remain roughly as they ever were: we seek to shape and free the world and at the same time to stay clear of it. Meanwhile, we continue to create a world within our borders. Our Hispanic population is increasing twice as fast as is our black population. Asians make up only 2% of the nation but more than 10% of our brightest college freshmen. We stir and shake. In 2086, you may be living in a wholly homogenized America, but perhaps too much stability would be bad for the system. Next year we will examine the Constitution on its 200th anniversary, and we will find it sturdy and wanting.
The American family, not 50 years ago the rock on which the country built its church, has fractured into atoms with separate orbits. The American woman, having shunned motherhood and housewifehood 15 years ago to establish herself in the labor market, now seeks to balance all three lives like dinner plates on sticks. The American man finds himself in new and scary territory and scrambles for adjustment. When the American man and woman part company, as half the newly married couples are expected to do these days, the American child is suddenly stranded, growing taller without a structure. Are we describing you?
Oddly, one reason that marriages disintegrate is a sign of health: people live longer. Effectively we live two lives, and have not yet learned to forge one long life of the two. We are keen on prolonging life, inventing artificial hearts, transplanting kidneys, livers, lungs. Perhaps you have got over that desire, judging death a proper stage of nature. Perhaps you've decided to live forever. Let us hope that you're up to it.