Is America more divided now than ever?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is America more divided now than ever?". Your opponent's style: Barack Obama

Are we truly progressing as a society?

Let me be clear about something - this idea that we're not progressing is fundamentally wrong, and frankly, it's the kind of thinking that holds us back. Look, I understand the frustration. When you turn on the news, when you scroll through social media, it feels like the world is falling apart. But that's not progress we're measuring - that's just noise, amplified by algorithms designed to keep us angry and engaged. Here's what real progress looks like: A child born today has a better chance of surviving their first year than at any point in human history. More people can read and write than ever before. We've cut extreme poverty in half in just the last generation. Diseases that terrorized our grandparents - polio, smallpox - are either gone or nearly extinct. Now, does that mean our work is done? Of course not. We still have enormous challenges - climate change, inequality, threats to democracy itself. But the very fact that we can identify these problems, that we have global institutions and technologies to address them, that young people around the world are organizing and demanding better - that's progress too. The question isn't whether we're progressing. The question is whether we have the courage to keep pushing forward, even when the path gets difficult. Because that's what progress has always required - not perfection, but persistence.

You want to talk about child survival rates? Let me tell you what's actually happening to American children right now. Life expectancy fell to 77 in 2020 and dropped further, to just over 76, in 2021 - that's the largest decrease over a two-year span since the 1920s [1]. Your rosy statistics about global progress mean nothing when we're literally going backwards. While you're celebrating diseases we conquered decades ago, Americans are dying younger than their parents for the first time in generations. The U.S. is failing to keep pace with dozens of countries around the world, and we're forecasted to rank progressively lower than other nations globally [1]. This isn't about algorithms making us angry - it's about real people dying from preventable causes while we pat ourselves on the back. Heart disease, overdose, firearm violence, and motor vehicle crashes explain the almost three-year gap between us and countries like the UK [1]. These aren't acts of God - they're failures of a society that's given up on actually protecting its people. Your "global institutions" and "young people organizing" haven't stopped us from becoming the only developed nation where people live shorter lives than they did five years ago. That's not progress - that's collapse with better marketing.

Now, let me be clear - you're cherry-picking the worst moment in recent history and calling it the trend. That's not analysis, that's catastrophizing. Yes, life expectancy dropped during the pandemic - that's what happens when a novel virus kills over a million Americans. But what you're missing is the remarkable recovery we're witnessing. Life expectancy jumped nearly a full year in 2023 to 78.4 years [1], and the overall death rate dropped by 6% [1]. That's not "collapse with better marketing" - that's a healthcare system and society that adapted and fought back. Your argument about being "the only developed nation where people live shorter lives" ignores the fact that we're rapidly closing that gap. COVID deaths plummeted 73% from 2022 to 2023 [1], and drug overdose deaths fell for the first time in five years [1]. These aren't accidents - they're the result of vaccination campaigns, improved treatments, and yes, those "young people organizing" you dismiss. The real story here isn't American decline - it's American resilience. We took a massive hit and we're bouncing back faster than most predicted. The same innovative capacity that put vaccines in arms in record time, that's developing new treatments for addiction, that's why life expectancy is projected to reach 79.3 years by 2033 [1]. You want to talk about progress? We just lived through the worst pandemic in a century and we're already nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. That's not failure - that's exactly what progress looks like when it's tested.