The Great Imposition

America’s Epidemic Of Hubris And Apathy

Derek Ahlswede
3 min readAug 14, 2024

How many Americans know that President Biden got an infrastructure bill passed one year into his administration?

How many Americans know that this summer we are building at a greater rate than we have in 70 years?

How many Americans know that today there are over 60,000 projects being funded throughout every single state in the country?

How many Americans know about the American Rescue Plan, Safer Communities Act, Chips and Science Act, Pact Act, Respect For Marriage Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act?

How many Americans are familiar with the pardoning of marijuana offenses, or the executive orders on reproductive care and criminal justice reform? Are we familiar with what the Biden/Harris administration has invested into climate action and clean energy? How about the protections of and improvements to the Affordable Care Act? Are we familiar, or are we just fanatical?

The popular American response to everything I just listed is, “yeah right. None of it matters. It’s all fake. There’s no difference between any Party or President.”

Last year a group of 154 Presidential historians, including scholars who have recently published peer-reviewed research and members of the American Political Science Association, ranked all of the Presidents. The historians ranked President Biden 14th out of 45, placing him in the top ternian.

Where’s Trump placed? 45th. Dead last.

Your friend who has a $500k house, a 2.1 high school GPA, and makes racist jokes after four whiskeys during poker night does not know better than the scholars who calculated this ranking.

Despite what your friend suggests, these historians didn’t publicize the list because they are baby blood-drinking members of Hillary’s Illuminati, wielding their secret powers to keep Trump diminished because he could save the American people if the Deep State would just get out of his way.

Why bring Biden’s record up when he’s out of the race? Because whether it’s him, Clinton, Kamala, or the Democratic Presidential candidate, the American tenor stays the same. There’s no concern for experience or accomplishment. There’s no care for the differences in our choices or the capability of our candidates. When that Presidential ranking was released, Joe Biden’s approval rating was one of the lowest in history, and the guy who ranked dead last all-time had a clear path, but this isn’t about Biden, Trump, or the 2024 election. It’s about the embedded adult psyche. It’s about what we teach our kids. This is about every election for the rest of our lives.

My political priority is not to take on Republicans or the Far Left. It’s to fight the spread of cynicism, same-sidesing, uninformed laziness, a simplistic worldview, and the audacity to believe that from your living room you know better.

You don’t know better, America, so either do the work it takes to become well-informed, productive, and civically responsible, or get out of the way.

You’re not helping.

--

--

Derek Ahlswede
Derek Ahlswede

Written by Derek Ahlswede

Ahlswede’s Collection Podcast Network / Living Directors / Self Pour / Talking Black Art / Stream on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Audible