The U.S. at 250: The case for reckoning and rebuild

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IAN BREMMER: We have something to celebrate, and that is that we have been successful for 250 years with this most unlikely human experiment. To fix it, we’re going to have to change a bunch of things, but you still come together. Patriotism in this country is having the courage not just to say, “I love my country,” but having the courage to publicly say when your country is (beep)ed up. That’s what patriotism is. And we need patriotic Americans to do precisely that now because it matters.

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Ian Bremmer, political scientist, president of the Eurasia Group, and adviser to business leaders and political leaders all around the globe. As we head toward the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, I wanted to talk with Ian about the state of brand America at a time of intense disruption. Just before we started recording, Ian got an impromptu call from U.S. Sen. John Ossoff, as if to underscore his deep contacts.

In this episode, Ian argues that Americans are in a revolutionary mood right now, and that that is a positive. He critiques the wealth divide in the U.S. and the opportunity lapses, and he certainly has no great love for President Trump. But his advice to businesses and to all of us, it isn’t partisan, it’s practical. And it will get you thinking about what the U.S. needs to extend its great experiment another 250 years. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and host of GZERO World on PBS. Ian, welcome back to Rapid Response.

BREMMER: Good to see you, Bob. It’s been a while.

SAFIAN: We’re nearing the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, the United States of America’s 250th birthday, with celebrations and festivities gearing up. But it’s also a moment of intense change: technological, economic and political. I’m eager to get your assessment of the health of the U.S. at 250 years old. Judging by the record-high stock market, things seem quite rosy. Is that the right barometer to look at?

BREMMER: It would be bad if that was the only barometer you were looking at. Most Americans aren’t sure what their country stands for. We now lionize, even worship, money in this country more than any other thing. In my view, that’s pretty far from what is sustainable. It’s also making people angrier. It’s certainly making people feel much more stressed and anxious about themselves, their future and their kids.

As a political scientist, of course, I think the fact that American power continues to be projected globally in ways that other countries cannot certainly matters. We’ve got the best entrepreneurs, we’ve got the best universities, we’ve got these extraordinary market returns, technology, defense, all of that stuff. When you’re on your deathbed, that’s not what really matters to you in terms of your life and your history. And it’s also not the reason why a lot of Americans care so much about their country. So I think we need to go bigger than that.

Copy Link“Other countries don’t trust the U.S.”

SAFIAN: Things like trust in the U.S. dollar, English as the default language, the primacy of U.S. entertainment and music and global culture, all of that is evidence that America’s impact and appeal remains predominant. But the U.S. brand, where it stands, is not quite as stable as it might look if you just talk about those things.

BREMMER: Other countries in the world don’t trust the United States. You talk to the Europeans and they’ll tell you how angry they are about the way the U.S. has treated them on trade, on Greenland, on Ukraine. I was with the Japanese recently, high-level officials, and they told me they felt like we’ve extorted them in their trade deal by demanding $550 billion of investment in the U.S. or else, and we get to decide where it goes. They don’t. It’s on and on and on. Countries around the world certainly understand American power, but the United States is not respected around the world and is not viewed as dependable.

SAFIAN: You have talked about this for a while. This is not just what’s happened in the last year or so with the second Trump administration, but a trend that’s been ongoing.

BREMMER: You’re right, Bob, that this is something I’ve talked about for well over a decade now. And there are structural aspects that have nothing to do with the president. The idea that the United States would just be the architect of global free trade is something that now most Americans reject. And they want to see industrial policy support for manufacturing, insourcing at home. The United States no longer supports the kind of leadership and burden-sharing militarily with other allies around the world. They want those countries to spend vastly more on their own defense. The U.S. does not want to have the kind of comparatively open borders and immigration regime that many from around the world benefited from, certainly when my grandmother came over here at the beginning of the 20th century. So all of those things are different. And they are different for Democrats and Republicans across the political spectrum.

Having said that, there has been an acceleration with a second Trump administration in the way that he has prioritized the actions of the executive over the last year. The Iranian war has been a staggering mistake, the biggest of his administration. And yet he ran on ending these wars, on being a peacemaker. It’s important to recognize that, as we think about the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, there’s a difference between these structural changes that will persist and these issues that are unique to Trump’s unfitness as a leader.

Copy LinkWhy Trump reflects a broader anti-establishment shift

SAFIAN: The limited pushback against some of these things that Trump has been doing, both within his party and from other institutions, is that historically significant?

BREMMER: I think it’s significant, but it’s also significant that we do have real checks and balances, which persist from a market perspective. CEOs have been pretty quiet.

SAFIAN: Right.

BREMMER: But when Trump does things that are clearly illegal, an independent judiciary eventually stops him. We’ve seen that with the tariffs, for example, used for ostensible national emergency concerns on countries around the world. The Supreme Court took its time to hear the case and rule on it, but struck it all down. And now Trump is saying that they’re going to see if they can find a way not to have to pay the money back that they’ve already collected, which, of course, again, was illegal. So they will appeal it and they’ll fight it, but they’ll lose. And I consider that pushback. It’s pushback from an independent judiciary that still exists in the United States.

There’s pushback when ICE engages in brutal excesses on the ground in Minnesota and is forced out by CEOs across the board and by local politicians left, right and center. And I can give you so many more examples of this. Courage is contagious. Trump’s clearly engaging in a lot of politically revolutionary activities in that he wants to end checks and balances on the executive, and he will fail. That doesn’t mean that’s the end of political revolution in the United States. We had one with FDR. FDR failed at some things that were excesses, like packing the Supreme Court, but he succeeded in other things, like creating an administrative state that helped allow for the creation of infrastructure in the country that built a working and middle class.

The reality is most Americans today believe some form of political revolution is necessary. That is why you got Trump, and it is why you will have, in the future, more and more political leaders like Trump in their anti-establishment sentiment, though not, hopefully, in their excessive authoritarian impulses, in their excessive kleptocracy personally, and in their policy incompetence. Those are things that are more unique to Trump, but they do not reflect or represent the anger, the anxiety, the demand for change, the revolutionary impulse that, let’s remember, Bob, actually made the United States an independent country to begin with 250 years ago.

Copy LinkThe real source of public anger in the U.S

SAFIAN: Jim VandeHei of Axios has argued that media tends to overstate the polarization in America. There’s more common ground than anything else. Do you buy that, or is there something else driving today’s revolutionary spirit?

BREMMER: I buy that there’s a lot of common ground among Americans when you get them in a room and you make them actually have a beer, have a burger. They talk to each other, they like each other. Algorithms destroy that, in the same way that when people are walking on the streets, they like each other, and you put them in cars on a freeway and they don’t. I get that. But most Americans believe that the United States has become a two-tier system and that if you have access and money, the American dream works for you, and otherwise it doesn’t.

I grew up in the ’70s. The United States in the ’70s was one of the most class-mobile countries of the advanced industrial democracies. In the last 40 years, it has shifted to becoming one of the most stagnant in terms of class mobility. The best predictor now of class outcomes in the U.S. today, compared to every other OECD economy, is how wealthy your parents are. And that is something that most Americans oppose. There’s a great deal of opportunity in small and medium enterprises, creating your own business, building it. That is what I’ve done from scratch, and I would’ve had a very hard time doing that in any other society. I’m very grateful for what the United States stands for in that regard, but I have seen that become far, far harder.

And, very importantly, that is very visible to people. It’s visible in a few different ways. People have been self-separating more. They’re in more gated communities. They’re in more environments, whether it’s clubs or institutions, that do not intermingle the way they used to. So that’s one. Number two, they’re spending much more time online, so they’re sorted algorithmically to people who are much more like them, and they also see the kind of life they’re supposed to have that the CEOs and the billionaires and the influencers have, or pretend they have, and they feel very inadequate compared to that.

And then they also experience the corporatization of day-to-day life, where every aspect of what you see and experience, companies are able to squeeze through microtargeting to get more money from those who can afford to pay it. So your experience in air travel, your experience in hotels, your experience at Disney World, your experience anywhere you might go as an American has become maximally segregated on the backs of the people who can pay the absolute most and the people who can’t. And that makes most Americans pretty pissed off. It feels kind of un-American. So, yeah, I think there’s a lot of agreement among most Americans that the system that presently exists is captured by powerful, networked, wealthy people, and most Americans don’t like that.

Copy LinkHow AI could deepen dysfunction beyond job loss

SAFIAN: And AI is creating its own wedge. It’s this revolutionary tool that disrupts the world of work and an extraordinary wealth-generating mechanism that is accelerating this economic disparity.

BREMMER: AI is interesting. Social media definitely accelerated that insecurity and anxiety. AI, of course, for everyone who uses it, is just blowing smoke up your ass. No matter how bad your idea, AI is very self-affirming in a way that parents would clearly recognize as bad, right? You need kids to understand that things are hard and that they can fail and not all their ideas are good ones and there are consequences of screwing up, and then you try harder. AI does not do that because AI is programmed to maximize engagement and for you to like it. So what AI is doing to society is very deeply dysfunctional, but it might not increase anxiety. It might actually move in the other direction and just increase false consciousness and narcissism and other things that will not serve us well as a society, but may not drive this specific thing that we are thinking about.

Now, on the other side, there are a lot of people who are going to have their jobs changed and perhaps displaced. When I see Jamie Dimon, who, among American CEOs that are not tech CEOs, seems to be the most forward-thinking on this, say, “Look, in 10 years and 20 years, you’re going to have all this wealth and people are going to be working half-time, so three and a half days a week as opposed to five, and isn’t that great?” Well, it would be great if we had a society like Europe, where people aren’t only thinking about how they can maximize wealth and instead had a broader view of well-being that included family and community and institutions.

SAFIAN: If we define ourselves by nothing but our work and our network, yeah.

BREMMER: If we define ourselves that way, and if we worship money and the markets, again, if we go back to the question you started this with — “Well, the market’s doing great, so doesn’t it mean America’s doing great?” — America’s in trouble if that’s where we’re heading.

There are so many business leaders I talk with, American business leaders, who refer to Europe as a museum where there is nothing we could possibly learn because they don’t have productivity, they don’t have efficiency, they don’t have growth, they don’t have entrepreneurialism, their tech is crap, all of that. And yet, from a social perspective, from a civic engagement and morality perspective, actually a lot of European societies, in very different ways — the Nordics in their way, the Spaniards in their way — have a much better shot at adapting to what AI means for humanity than the United States presently does, even though the Americans are absolutely in the lead in using AI to drive wealth and innovation and all the rest, which we need.

SAFIAN: Ian’s snapshot of America at 250 years old isn’t simple, even though each point he makes is logical. AI is dysfunctional, yes, but we need it. So how do we reconcile those things? And what sort of revolution might America be moving toward in 2026? We’ll talk about that more after the break. Stay with us.

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Before the break, political scientist Ian Bremmer outlined some of the challenges facing the United States on its 250th birthday. Now we talk about what he’s hopeful about, the revolution that he thinks the United States needs in 2026, and the role that tech and business play, plus the defiant way he plans to celebrate on July 4. Let’s jump back in.

Copy LinkWhy tech power is outpacing public accountability

You’ve talked about how the most important new global leaders aren’t countries, they’re technology companies in a lot of ways. Is there some stability that provides because they’re looking out and thinking, “They need a healthy population and a healthy marketplace and healthy open trade”? Or is it scary? Is it dangerous? Where’s the balance on that?

BREMMER: There’s no balance yet. Governments exist, at least in principle, to take care of citizens and defend citizens, while companies do not. They have many different stakeholders — their shareholders, their workers, their customers — but very infrequently will they really think about a responsibility to society as a whole.

And one of the big problems I have with a lot of these technology companies is how socialist they are. They’re very capitalist when they make profits, but whenever they’re directly responsible for social ills, suddenly they’re not capitalists anymore. Suddenly it’s like, “Oh no, no, no, the government should pay for that, or you should pay for that, or your kids should pay for that, but not us.” Why are you suddenly scared of capitalism? We need our technology companies to be capitalists when they have negative externalities and costs that come directly from the products they are developing and putting into the ecosystem. And this was just as true for the oil companies and carbon as it is for the cigarette companies and tobacco smoke, as it is for AI companies and society at large.

SAFIAN: So if you’re an AI company and you’re spending tons of money on compute and data centers and energy, you should be prepared to invest in similar ways in community, in helping people who are transitioning from the old job market to the new job market?

BREMMER: Well, they’re not. Should they? Ideally, that should be the role of the government. You want a government that effectively regulates so companies don’t have to do things they’re not actually structured to do.

SAFIAN: Because they’re not good at it, right?

BREMMER: They’re not good at it. They’re short-term. They’ve got market cyclicality, and they’ve got fundraising rounds they need to prioritize. They’re always talking their book and all of that stuff, right? We’ve got three sorts of governance out there. We’ve got the American system, which is great for entrepreneurs, but where the private sector essentially pays for and captures the regulatory environment and the government. You’ve got the Chinese system, where the government actually captures the private sector. They determine what the private sector can and can’t do, who they’re going to fund, which sectors are strategic, and which aren’t. Then you’ve got the European system, where the government is an independent arbiter that really is trying to regulate in favor of society.

Now, here’s the issue: The former two drive a lot more growth, and you need growth to pay for the things the European system wants to do for society. The first two also happen to be where AI is dominant. You’d be much more likely to get a series of regulations that would be safer for society with the European-style system. You’re much less likely to get the AI that would drive it in a European-style system to begin with. So we’re stuck in this weird situation in America where the technology companies are essentially self-regulating and self-governing at this point. I think this is going to be an essential driver of politics in 2028 and in the campaign coming up. But another two and a half years of this, given how fast AI is moving, is going to be very disruptive and will create reactions in society that I don’t think technology companies will like.

Copy LinkWhy political revolution can be a healthy response to institutional drift

SAFIAN: I don’t want this 250th birthday to pass without any presence or cake. So are there things that give you hope? Are there things that you’re optimistic about? Do you have a vision for how this all might come together in a way that is positive or hopeful?

BREMMER: Well, of course. The worst thing would be if you had all of this systemic change and Americans feeling like the system is inadequate, and no political revolution in response. That would be horrible.
What’s happening is obvious, both domestically and globally. You have a set of institutions, an architecture, values, priorities, and leaders, and they are created to address a certain balance of power that exists at a particular period of time. The balance of power changes. The world changes, the country changes, but the institutions are sticky. As that gap becomes too great, you end up in a recession — not an economic recession, but a political recession.

So we are now facing that in the United States. We’re in a political recession, and the American people are reacting to that, demanding more radical change. What I want to see is people fighting for what they believe in. We got an American Pope, Pope Leo, and his first encyclical came out on AI. One of the most important human beings on this planet, with enormous impact and influence, is actually talking about what we need to make society function. Some of that is pretty revolutionary, but this needs to be a time of great change. What has gotten us here will not get us another 250 years. It won’t even get us another 25. Patriotism in this country is having the courage not just to say, “I love my country,” but having the courage to publicly say when your country is (beep) up. That’s what patriotism is. And we need patriotic Americans to do precisely that now, because it matters.

SAFIAN: The idea of revolution scares some people because it sounds like dramatic change. What you’re saying is this country needs revolution, and revolution has always been part of the country.

BREMMER: Yeah. We had a revolution to start the country. It was successful beyond our wildest dreams, and we revere that. Then with FDR, after the Gilded Age, with the New Deal and the creation of an administrative state that allowed generations of Americans to have a better shot, that was a successful political revolution. So third time’s the charm. But Trump isn’t the right guy. A lot of people believed in him. He was able to build himself up, and he has some genius. He’s not the political revolution we need, but we still need a political revolution.

SAFIAN: Does it need to be structural, or is this really more of a leadership revolution, like a vision?

BREMMER: Successful revolutions in recent history have often had a leader attached to them, but not all. There’s been a green revolution. The world is moving from oil and gas into post-carbon. The Chinese are now leading the world in that, but it’s happening. And that started at a grassroots level. Trump has helped, by the way. There’s no question that launching this ill-fated war in Iran is going to do more to move the world away from oil and gas long term. Trump will end up being the biggest American presidential driver for green energy in history — not intentionally, but nonetheless. And that’s a really positive thing.

Copy LinkShould we celebrate the Fourth of July this year?

SAFIAN: For July 4, will you celebrate America? How will you celebrate?

BREMMER: Absolutely. It’s funny — especially as a kid who grew up in the projects and who now lives with staggering privilege — I have a summer house in Nantucket. They close down Main Street, and everybody gets there with their water pistols, and the firetruck comes down and soaks everybody. The whole island comes out. In the morning, the Unitarian Church does a reading of the Declaration of Independence and sings some songs and all that. And this year, just a few days ago, the head of the Unitarian Church said they were going to protest, and they weren’t going to do that for the Fourth of July because they’re not proud of a lot of things happening politically in the country right now — Voter Rights Act, Supreme Court, all that sort of stuff.

And for the first time in my life, I publicly came out on social media and said, “I strongly disagree with that.” Just because the American president is politicizing the Fourth of July in ways that I consider completely inappropriate does not mean it’s OK for the other side to do that too. No, we have something to celebrate, and that is that we have been successful for 250 years with this most unlikely human experiment. To fix it, we’re going to have to change a bunch of things, but you still come together.

SAFIAN: Well, Ian, as always, it is great to talk with you and get your insights. Thanks for doing it.

BREMMER: Thanks, Bob. Good to talk to you, man.

SAFIAN: I like the image of Ian and the Nantucket community gathering together to hear the Declaration of Independence. It feels old-fashioned and reassuring. But what sticks with me most is a comment he made with the opposite sentiment: This needs to be a time of great change. What Ian is saying is that, however impactful and influential America’s past and present may be, it is at a crossroads. It needs to refresh its revolutionary spirit, as he describes it. And while that kind of upheaval may be uncomfortable, it’s also inevitable. As business leaders, we embrace change because change is necessary for growth and ongoing relevance. As citizens, we need to be equally brave and bold.

So as people raise their voices in praise of a 250-year experiment, let’s remember that experimentation is messy and unpredictable and unsettling, and that it’s also exciting, energizing, and above all, necessary. For those listening in the U.S., I hope you and yours have a great July 4 holiday. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.