Whilst the Soviet Union (USSR) collapsed, the United States (U.S.) never stopped needing it. For much of the twentieth century, the USSR gave the U.S. more than rivalry. The USSR’s existence gave the U.S. an opponent that could be milked for moral absolution, all the while making appearing as the patron saint of righteousness and the champion of ultimate evil. Against Soviet communism, the U.S proclaimed an unmoving stance of fighting for freedom against tyranny, capitalism against communism, faith against atheism, and democracy against dictatorship. The Cold War was not merely a geopolitical contention between two superpowers. Instead, the Cold War upkeep for the polished image the U.S. fought two wars to craft. The Library of Congress described the Cold War as an era shaped by competing political and economic ideologies between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. At the same time, Reagan’s 1983 “Evil Empire” speech transformed the contention into one of moral debate, alluding that the Soviet Union was not simply an adversary, but a malevolent entity that must be extinguished. The analogy matters because U.S. exceptionalism can only function with a polar comparison. To say capitalism is natural becomes easier when communism can be conveyed as artificial and coercive. To say America leads the world becomes a convincing reality when the world is divided between those who follow Washington and those trapped behind the enemy line. The Soviet Union helped build this narrative, becoming instrumental in America’s nationalist campaign. The end result turned the growth of American power into a necessary progression towards world peace. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, that power dynamic did not disappear. George H. W. Bush announced the fall on December 25, 1991, marking the formal end of the adversary that had organised American foreign policy for nearly half a century. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union left a problem in its wake. If America built its national identity against the hatred and comparison of the fallen Soviet Union, what happens when the enemy vanishes? For the U.S,the answer was not a peaceful retirement of Cold War thinking. For America is a nation of exuberant pride no matter if the competition is now unclear. The U.S kept in the habit of understanding itself through hostile outside forces. Trump’s politics emerge from this afterlife. His foreign policy rhetoric differs from that of Cold War anti-communism, because it is not organised around one ideological rival. Russia is no longer the Soviet Union, and China is not a clean replacement. The global order is not black-and-white like previous eras: capitalism versus communism. Trump keeps the structure of Cold War exceptionalism while scattering enemy labels across the rest of the world. His America does not simply claim greatness because of ideological contrast, it reveres this idea by insisting that foreign countries, institutions, migrants and trading partners are cheating, exploiting and invading the U.S. Trump’s deflective tactic gives the slogan “America First” an entirely new meaning. On Trump’s first day back in office in 2025, Trump signed the “America First Policy Directive,” stating that the U.S. foreign policy would champion American interests and put American citizens first. On the surface, the policy boasts a relatively expectant delivery of nationalism paired with yet another promise to prioritise its citizens. However, understanding Trump and his clinginess to U.S. greatness provides interesting details about the moral atmosphere surrounding the signing of this policy. In Trump’s rhetoric, the outside world is not simply competition; it’s a predatory entity that consistently seeks to take advantage of his country. International institutions do not only constrain American power, but actively impede American sovereignty. The trade agenda shows this clearly. In 2025, the White House’s “Fair and Reciprocal Plan” argued that reciprocal tariffs would stop Americans from being “taken advantage of” by a selfish international trade system. Another White House fact sheet framed tariffs as an effort to “take back” economic sovereignty, pushing that foreign trade practices were direct threats to American workers and national security. That is not a defensive statement alone. It is a worldview perpetuated to American audiences as truth and aims to condemn foreign agencies as a whole rather than pointing the finger at one. The same pattern appears in Trump’s treatment of alliances. NATO was created in 1949 in the shadow of Soviet power, with mutual defence at the center. Writers note that the alliance was formed with a primary aim of countering the risk of a Soviet attack on allied territory. However, Trump often treats NATO less as a global strategic community, and more as a delinquent business organisation. In 2025, he cast doubt on whether the U.S. could defend NATO members that, through his eyes, were not contributing enough to warrant American protection. The Soviet Union disappeared, but this did not extinguish the insatiable need for the U.S. to validate their pride. As we can see, Trump’s America is what happens when a country keeps the Cold War thinking, but it runs out of a single enemy large enough to keep it going. The enemy has not vanished; its label has been extended and scattered towards any nation that Trump sees fit. In that sense, the world becomes the new Soviet Union: exploitative, profoundly ungrateful and always standing in the way of American greatness.
By Adia May
Therapy was once an elite luxury: expensive, lengthy, and largely inaccessible. That began to change in the late 20th century as talk shows, expanding insurance coverage, and a booming self-help industry pushed the topic of mental health into the mainstream. Decades of steady growth turned into a sprint during the COVID-19 pandemic as entire generations scrambled to navigate unprecedented global isolation. Like most modern tools, mental health care quickly went digital. Telehealth surged and social media feeds were suddenly flooded with psychologized terminology, mental health trends, and viral personal testimonies. Today, young adults are the most likely demographic to seek mental health services. Recent national surveys show that adults aged 18 to 25 receive mental health treatment at higher rates than any other adult age group. By 2023, nearly one in three adolescents had received some form of mental health treatment. Many view this explosion as a promising sign of a self-reflective generation. For those seeking help out of genuine curiosity or tragic necessity, therapy offers profound value. For others, however, cultural shifts toward mental wellness have created a paradox: the true beneficiaries of psychology are rarely the ones most inclined towards its language. The constant consumption of TikTok-packaged symptomology and shrewdly spliced advice from self-proclaimed experts has serious drawbacks. Most notably, it encourages one of the most common pitfalls in psychology: self-diagnosis. “Therapy-speak” is now so ubiquitous online that failing to use terms like gaslighting, trauma bond, boundaries, trigger, or toxic can make someone seem culturally out-of-step. Armed with these bite-sized theories, young people online have become increasingly focused on categorizing their flaws. Instead of booking an appointment to gain objective insight, many walk into a therapist’s office already convinced they fit a specific textbook label. This environment normalizes mental distress, but it also normalizes rigid, checkbox explanations for complex human behavior, thought patterns, and emotional struggles. As therapy culture pushes psychological language beyond its appropriate clinical boundaries, self-discovery can become haphazard and counterproductive. True emotional growth requires sitting with and reflecting upon discomfort, but modern Internet culture often mistakes it for a symptom in need of constant validation. Mistakes that should inspire healthy self-reflection are more easily filtered through the lens of self-diagnosis. In doing so, therapy culture risks transforming a tool meant to challenge faulty perceptions into a vehicle for constructing convenient narratives. Personal growth is nurtured through neither neglect nor overfixation, yet the latter has increasingly been presented as the cure for the former, thus blurring the line between self-discovery and self-obsession. Despite enjoying a higher material standard of living than previous generations, young adults report historically high rates of anxiety, depression, and psychological distress. While many factors undoubtedly contribute to this trend, therapy culture alone has not delivered the emotional flourishing many expected. It is worth asking why.
By Mia Downing
Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, set strict rules on his kids’ technology use. In the 21st century, digital technology is an essential complement to human workers in virtually every industry. To prepare the children of today for the jobs of tomorrow, schools have increasingly adopted screen-based devices for their students, often starting in lower grade levels. As a result, schools have largely given assignments to students online, both during and outside of school hours. Even when minors are not at school, recreational screen time dominates their day, often spent on social media websites. And, with the rise of artificial intelligence in the past few years, students are becoming increasingly reliant upon it to complete assignments as opposed to seeking in-person assistance from peers or instructors. With technology becoming unavoidable early in our lives, its effects on social skills, brain development, and overall intelligence must be carefully monitored. But how can we detect the dangers that accompany the domination of digital technology in our children’s lives? A closer investigation into the routines of the founders of many tech giants would certainly give a few hints. The founders of Apple and Microsoft, whose products have dominated the market for smartphones and personal computers, respectively, had several children of their own who grew up during eras in which these products were used worldwide. But this usage was not widespread amongst the children of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. The billionaire founders of tech giants did not allow their kids to use phones at young ages. They restricted screen usage to a narrow timeframe and purpose. They asserted that their discipline existed to ensure that their children’s social skills, school performance, and creativity would not be hindered by time lost to said devices due to their addictive nature. These CEOs are not misguided in their reasoning. Studies from multiple psychologists link increased screen times among younger children to worse states of mental health involving depression and anxiety. Aggressive behavior issues also rise due to screen time’s constant overstimulation. Furthermore, poor physical health and worsened school performance have been observed as a result of longer screen time with obesity, physical inactivity, and worsening eyesight all increasing. In fact, even outside the random samples of families from around the world used in these studies, evidence from a whole, compact community from decades ago supports these conclusions. Notel, a pseudonym given to a secret town in the Cascades of British Columbia, was isolated from television networks due to its geography, unlike most of Canada during the 1970s. But after TV services were finally introduced, researchers were eager to study the effects on the community. And, in a stark contrast to the era before the TV, children’s schools and playgrounds reported a surge in instances of aggressive behavior. Furthermore, the town’s culture changed: participation in events that brought the community together, such as sporting matches and dinners, decreased. As a result, its cohesion and trust sharply fell too. If we want to best prepare our children for the world of the future, it starts in a real-life—not digital—environment.
By Edward Kim
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