…rising deaths by suicide and substance abuse in the working class.   As this account appears in the NYT, no discussion of actual causes and effects is permitted, thus we find this:

We have deep structural problems that have been a half century in the making, under both political parties, and that are often transmitted from generation to generation. Only in America has life expectancy now fallen three years in a row, for the first time in a century, because of “deaths of despair.”

But that's because "both political parties" have been operating in the shadow of the Reagan Revolution from the neoliberal right that began in 1980, and that has gradually destroyed the FDR Presidency (and its consensus shared by both parties) that lasted from 1933 until 1980.  In 2016, we had the first real challenge to the neoliberal consensus in Bernie Sanders's candidacy for the Presidential nomination.  The future of this benighted country will depend upon whether Reagan's long reign is finally brought to an end.