Our National Rot

Our National Rot — Baimba Yilla, Ed.D.

“Signs of our cultural decline are inescapable and everywhere at once.”

There is something deeply disturbing about the people we’ve become, the culture we’ve allowed to take root beneath us, like cracks spreading through the foundation of our lives.

Signs of our cultural decline are inescapable and everywhere at once, magnified most profoundly by the very people who today have assumed the mantle of American leadership.

Consider that in early 2025 the U.S. Administration took a curious interest in Africa, the very continent the President devalued in 2018 by saying it was full of "shithole countries" when making the case for the U.S. to welcome more immigrants from places like Norway.

Coming to the defense of South Africa’s European minority, the Administration unilaterally cut off aid and assistance to South Africa, arguing that the country’s land-expropriation law discriminated against them and had provoked what it characterized as ‘genocide.’

Nothing of the sort had in fact taken place.

South Africa’s government signed the Expropriation Act in January of the same year to address the country's landownership imbalance, a legacy of apartheid that allowed the country's European minority (roughly 7 percent of the population) to own over 70 percent of the land while Indigenous Africans (roughly 80 percent of the population) owned 4 percent.

The Act permits the government to seize private property for public use, provided “just compensation” is offered, as the U.S. Constitution similarly requires of our government. It also allows land to be seized without compensation in limited circumstances, such as when it is unused, has no development plan, and is held solely for its potential to appreciate in value.

While the South Africans affected opposed the law for reasons more historical than legal, they never claimed they were being persecuted because of it. Yet none of that mattered, not to the donor who had instigated the issue and his motives for doing so, nor to the Administration pursuing its broader political objective.
Elon Musk, the South African-born former member of the Administration who later had an ugly feud with its leader, caused a stir when his efforts to expand Starlink in South Africa stalled.

He sought to retain full ownership when the country’s law required at least 30 percent qualifying local ownership for the relevant telecommunications license Starlink was required to obtain. When the authorities refused to bend, and he took it as an affront to his privilege, publicly claiming he was being discriminated against because he was “white.”

Thus entered the man he helped get elected, backed by the full force of the U.S. government and driven by the twin objectives of pressuring South Africa to relent on Starlink for the benefit of his billionaire friend, and advancing a broader political objective.

That broader goal was evident against the backdrop of the Administration’s restrictive immigration policies. By portraying Europeans as persecuted and in need of protection, the Administration reinforced its political aim of defending the interests and privileges of those classified as “white.”

Genocide was not really the point. The more revealing claim appeared in the Executive Order terminating assistance, which said that South Africa “has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice.”

The Administration thus took South Africa’s opposition to Israel’s conduct in Gaza and cast it as an aggressive position toward the United States itself.
Congress and virtually everyone else with a voice influential enough to make a difference, save some media outlets, fell silent as the Administration purposely misrepresented the facts, turning the South Africa into such a pariah that Americans came to accept its decision to prioritize the country’s European minority for refugee resettlement, based on the false claims of their persecution.

Most disturbing about this story is not that people believed the lies. It is that they knew they were lies and ignored or repeated them anyway because the lies either served them or aligned with their worldview.

This cynical complicity, to give it a proper name, changes dishonesty from an abdication of responsibility by someone at the top into a social framework: the leader sets the story, and the followers parrot it, reluctant to risk their position or influence.
But let’s face the facts.

As egregious as what happened to South Africa was, it pales in comparison to some of the more outlandish political stunts we’ve witnessed in this country since January 2025, including the claimed “invasion” by Tren de Aragua, the “massive fraud” as the justification for dismantling government, and the “ruse of illegal immigration” as an excuse to target major cities governed by the opposition.

And yet still, the reason the South Africa example is perhaps more poignant than many of the others is that the lie is not merely being used to justify a policy against a particular group. It is being used to construct an alternate reality about an entire sovereign country, and then American power is exercised on the basis of that reality.

We are now regularly washing, rinsing, and repeating the cycle (hello, Venezuela, Iran), watching the damage gradually flow beyond our politics and into the very fabric of our culture.

The evidence is difficult to overstate.

Neighbors deny each other the civility of basic human kindness, turning indifference into everyday practice, and citizens deny fellow citizens the rights afforded to them because they are different.

Justices of the Supreme Court willfully rule on the side of injustice, framing their bigotry in “originalist” language that claims fidelity to the Constitution while obscuring the prejudice and human consequences of their decisions.

Members of Congress side with legislation that benefits those who finance their campaigns rather than those who elected them, while turning a blind eye to the mismanagement, corruption, and usurpation of congressional powers by a president they fear because he can diminish their influence.

The Executive Branch rules by decree, treating the Constitution and rule of law as suggestions rather than constraints, to give cronies tax breaks, dismantle government, wage a senseless war, deny citizens civil protections, detain and deport, coerce foreign countries, and waste tax payer dollars on frivolous, vanity projects while denying similar appropriations for food, healthcare, and education.

In becoming the very embodiment of our national rot, the same Executive Branch demands fealty from followers, from the rich who feed at the trough they have created, to the everyday man stretching his earnings to make ends meet, to the downtrodden who somehow still believe in the election promises made.
Each, in their own way, follow the leader.

They repeat his lies about everything he utters not because they believe him or seriously think there is good in him but because they benefit from his naked dishonesty.

The rich keep making money from it, while everyone else beams with pride that America, even as it slips rapidly beyond their means, finally belongs to them, delighted by what they see the Supreme Court, Congress, ICE, and every other alphabet agency doing at his command.

But that’s not the defining character of our broader national decline.

After all, we’ve lived with prejudice for centuries. We’ve tolerated money in our politics ever since it became the gateway to power. And we’ve had callous leaders before whose ideas, enacted into law, have caused real harm to American communities too small, impoverished, or powerless to have a meaningful say.
What we’ve seldom seen in this country, however, to the degree and on the scale we see in our modern era, is intelligent citizens willingly embracing dishonesty from those in authority because they know that, if they don’t, someone else will.

Truth has become less important than access, loyalty, and self-interest, turning the very society we’re engaged in building together into a flawed and deeply troubling experiment in trust, cooperation, and shared responsibility.

Perhaps the answer is this: a society at risk of losing itself.

Choosing integrity over convenience, truth over loyalty, and country over self-interest ought to be our path forward, our way out.
Despite our differences, we should still be able to agree that honesty and doing what’s right must matter again if our national rot is to turn into renewal.
It is not too late.

Baimba Yilla, Ed.D