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What to feel good about right now
I wrote two weeks ago about the positive news from an otherwise drab election night. There's other good news in the U.S., building for decades, that shouldn't be ignored either.
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LT Julie “Jinx” Roland is a Naval Aviator who has deployed to the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf flying helicopters. She is also a 3L at the University of San Diego School of Law and the director of the San Diego Chapter of the Truman National Security Project.
Since the election—as I wrote about last time—the tenor of many of our conversations has trended toward either the negative or the nihilist.
It’s not that we aren’t concerned about the state of politics in the U.S. and in the world. We are. But it’s neither healthy nor productive to focus only on what’s bad in the world.
For those of you who read the news regularly—and particularly those of you who get your news from Twitter or TikTok or wherever—coverage slants almost entirely negative. Why?¹
Bad news generally happens fast, whether it’s a tragedy or a natural disaster or a political scandal.
Good news generally happens slowly. When things improve in public health or economic development or education, it usually happens over a period of years, and often can only be measured in hindsight.
A lot feels pretty gloomy right now. We wanted to focus on what’s good.
Remarkable accomplishments in public health
Cancer
For the past 25 years or so, the incidence of new cancers has declined slightly. But the rates of cancer deaths have declined precipitously.
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It’s a testament to the miracle that is modern medicine; developments in cancer treatments have saved many, many millions of lives.
Smoking
Another reason fewer people are dying of cancer: fewer people are smoking.²
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Cigarette use in America is at an 80-year low. And in 2019, Congress passed a bipartisan law that increased the smoking age from 18 to 21. This will save lives.
Polio
We are remarkably close to eradicating polio globally. If and when we’re successful in doing so, it is no exaggeration to say that it will be one of the most extraordinary accomplishments in human history.
It’s worth reflecting on how pervasive polio once was, and how incredible its near-eradication is:
Polio has been around for all of recorded human history. There are Ancient Egyptian steles from 3,500 years ago that reference polio.
In 1952, polio killed 3,000 American children. None have died in decades. In 1988, there were 350,000 polio cases around the world. In 2024, there have only been about 60.
Polio was a feature of American childhood for decades, and its impact is long-lasting. I have letters, written to my grandmother in the ’40s, telling her to avoid certain swimming pools because of polio outbreaks. I have a cousin who died last year, in part because polio he contracted in New Guinea during World War II made it impossible for him to swallow towards the end of his life.
Qui Tran is a martial artist and the owner of two great St. Louis restaurants (Mai Lee and Nudo House). He had to stop competing because of complications from post-polio after he contracted the disease in a Vietnamese refugee camp as a baby in the ’70s.
I bring all of this up to say: in the very recent past, polio was pervasive. The extraordinary progress we’ve made so far in its eradication is cause for celebration.
More accomplishments in public health
Deaths from HIV and AIDS have been declining for decades. With proper care, it is both preventable and treatable. The death rate has fallen by more than 50% since 2010, and it continues to decline.
Likewise, continued breakthroughs with the malaria vaccine will save hundreds of thousands of lives per year, and reduce the number of annual cases of malaria—which was, in 2022, a staggering 249 million.
Just a few weeks ago, the FDA approved the first new treatment for schizophrenia in 70 years. It’s been hailed as a “game changer” drug. Somewhere between 650,000 and 1.7 million Americans have schizophrenia,³ which costs the government $170 billion per year. Not only will new treatment improve lives, but it will also save taxpayers money.
This list is hardly exhaustive. But we’re making huge progress in public health in noteworthy ways.
Environmental Accomplishments
Ozone
When we were younger, there was a lot of talk about the decay in the earth’s ozone layer. You don’t really hear much about that anymore. Why?
Because we fixed it! As things stand, the ozone layer is on track to be repaired by 2066, and sooner in certain parts of the world.
Other good news
Despite being one of the cleanest and most reliable sources of energy, nuclear energy, plagued by bad PR and several high-profile incidents, had been in decline for decades. But it’s experiencing a renaissance, and it’s a huge part of our efforts to decarbonize energy production.
As the technologies improve, the cost of renewable energy continues to decline across all sources. The more that happens, the more decarbonization will happen even without robust government support.
In 2019, renewable energy surpassed coal-powered energy production for the first time. That should only continue to accelerate.
Gay marriage and social tolerance
Support for same-sex marriage has been climbing for 30 years. Nothing about the recent election cycles has changed that:
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The same is true for support for interracial marriage, by the way. In 1958, 4% of Americans supported interracial marriage; today, it’s 94%.
The kids are alright
The teenage pregnancy rate has dropped dramatically in the past 30 years. That’s especially true for 15- to 17-year-olds, for whom the teenage pregnancy rate has dropped by 82%.
Since its peak in the early ’90s, the youth crime rate has dropped dramatically as well. Youth arrests for violent crimes have dropped 67% since 2006, and even more dramatically than that since its peak in the mid-’90s.
What does this mean? Fewer children are making decisions as teenagers that could negatively and irreversibly alter the course of their adult lives.
There are other positive trends too:
Corporal punishment like spanking is associated with worse physical and mental health, poorer educational outcomes, and increased perpetration of violence. So the decline in corporal punishment of children is a positive development.
Because of safer cars, seatbelt laws, and car seat laws, far fewer children under 13 are dying in car accidents than at the peak in the 1970s.
Juvenile diabetes⁴—once a death sentence—is largely treatable with the right interventions. There’s still work to do, but people are living far longer than ever before.
Wins on election day
Support for workers
In a powerful show of support for workers, voters in Missouri, Alaska, and Nebraska said “yes” to measures that raise wages and secure paid sick leave.
In Missouri, Proposition A establishes a path to a $15 minimum wage by 2026, with built-in paid sick leave. Alaska’s Measure 1 will increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2027, plus sick leave and protections for worker’s right to avoid mandatory on-the-job political or religious meetings. And Nebraska voters passed Initiative 436, making it a requirement for businesses to provide up to seven days of earned paid sick leave for employees.
This commitment to fair pay and health security is an encouraging sign that voters want fairer labor practices.
Abortion access
We’ve written before about the importance of abortion access, and Ben recently wrote about the fact that the abortion access ballot measure did well. It’s worth digging into that more.
Voters are—on the whole—emphatically protecting abortion on a state level.⁵ This election, the people of Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York all voted to enshrine the right to an abortion in their state constitutions. In doing so, voters in these states have forged a path forward that other states may follow in 2026 and beyond.
Other wins
In Nevada, voters approved Question 4, a ballot measure to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments. The fact that this was allowed in the first place is problematic, but Nevada voters showed up and did the right thing here.
Maybe these votes feel like little wins, but they’re not—in fact, they signify a massive victory for all those who used their collective voice to change policies despite not being in the legislature. When we count on elected officials to solve our problems, sometimes they move too slowly (or not at all, or backward…). Ballot measures and propositions offer a way to return power to the people.
Voters are standing up for their rights and freedoms, and that’s worth noting and celebrating.
Final thoughts
We’re not telling you to ignore the negative. But sometimes, in the face of seemingly insurmountable despair, all it takes is a little positivity to change the narrative and remind us that not all is lost.
In fact, acknowledging the good news that comes from good work is critical if we’re going to keep up the good work. We’re not helpless. Progress is underway. There is hope.
Feel free to share this post with someone who will enjoy it. (If you’re reading this email because someone sent it to you, please consider subscribing.)
P.S. For those of you who are paying attention to defeating sports gambling in Missouri, here’s some good potential news. It’s not over quite yet…
This article reflects LT Roland’s personal views and does not represent the views of the United States Navy.
This, and also: bad news sells. Nothing we can do about that.
For good measure: this includes e-cigarettes, which means that traditional cigarette use is in an even more precipitous decline. As of September, e-cigarette and vaping among youth are at their lowest point in a decade.
This is a back-of-the-envelope calculation: it's not the easiest population to survey since people with schizophrenia are so much more likely to be homeless. But the math here: there are 258 million American adults as of the 2020 Census—schizophrenia is generally an adult-onset disease—and between 0.25% and 0.64% of the population is estimated to have schizophrenia.
These days, also known as Type 1 diabetes.
Trump spent much of his campaign trumpeting his overturning of Roe, saying the decision should be left to the states. So it’s a big deal that people in states around the U.S. voted to protect abortion access.
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