File away Peggy Noonan’s latest column, “America Is at Risk of Boiling Over,” into the Grand Unified Theory of PANIC!!!! file. Money quote:
The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.
As a parent, I can say from personal experience that this is absolutely true, at least in my case, and it’s a big part of the reason I’m so pessimistic — or, to put it more precisely, why my sense of foreboding about the future makes me so pessimistic, rather than being something that I can dismissively wave away, as I probably would if I didn’t have kids. It sucks, and I mean sucks, to feel like you’re raising your kids in a country that’s on the brink of, at best, a period of stagnation and/or mild decline — and at worst, something far more frightening. Yet’s that’s precisely how I feel, and I know I’m not alone.
Anyway, back to Noonan:
The country I was born into was a country that had existed steadily, for almost two centuries, as a nation in which everyone thought—wherever they were from, whatever their circumstances—that their children would have better lives than they did. That was what kept people pulling their boots on in the morning after the first weary pause: My kids will have it better. They’ll be richer or more educated, they’ll have a better job or a better house, they’ll take a step up in terms of rank, class or status. …
Parents now fear something has stopped. They think they lived through the great abundance, a time of historic growth in wealth and material enjoyment. They got it, and they enjoyed it, and their kids did, too: a lot of toys in that age, a lot of Xboxes and iPhones. (Who is the most self-punishing person in America right now? The person who didn’t do well during the abundance.) But they look around, follow the political stories and debates, and deep down they think their children will live in a more limited country, that jobs won’t be made at a great enough pace, that taxes—too many people in the cart, not enough pulling it—will dishearten them, that the effects of 30 years of a low, sad culture will leave the whole country messed up. And then there is the world: nuts with nukes, etc.
I boldfaced that last part because I think it’s important to recognize that this isn’t just about the economy. It’s also about Ahmadinejad, and about McDonald’s, and about Snooki. It’s about a lot of things.
Noonan again:
Optimists think that if we manage to turn a few things around, their kids may have it . . . almost as good. The country they inherit may be . . . almost as good. And it’s kind of a shock to think like this; pessimism isn’t in our DNA.
In other words, even the optimists are pessimists now.
(Though Noonan adds: “But it isn’t pessimism, really, it’s a kind of tough knowingness, combined, in most cases, with a daily, personal commitment to keep plugging.” I’m not so sure about that. I mean, sure, people keep plugging. But I think, definitionally, the underlying attitude she’s describing is pessimism.)
Again, this jives with my own personal experience. I am, at my core, a very optimistic person. Notwithstanding my personal Twitter meme vis a vis #PANIC, which is mostly a joke (mostly), and notwithstanding my broad elitist critiques of human nature, I’m constitutionally predisposed to see the good in people, to assume the best about their intentions and actions, to presume that things will work out all right, and to presuppose that folks will still muddle through with reasonable success when they don’t. Normally, while I’m no Tom Loy, I’m still more Polyanna than Grumpy Old Man. But my whole outlook, not necessarily on my own life but on the nation’s, has changed in the last couple of years, and try as I might to convince myself that I’m wrong — I can’t quite do it.
Back to Noonan again. She adds:
But do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down? They don’t act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past.
Noonan diagnoses the problem as a “growing gulf between the country’s thought leaders, as they’re called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we’ll call normal lives on the ground in America.” I tend to agree, though I happen to think that the “gulf” is the result of simultaneous trends moving both sides further apart from each other, not just the “thought leaders” becoming more detached from everyday experience.
Sure, our “elite cultural masters,” as I called them in my original Grand Unified Theory of PANIC!!! post, are perhaps becoming more elitist. But also, the cultural veneration of the common man — the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction after we perhaps misguidedly placed too much trust in those “masters” during an earlier era — is causing those folks leading “normal lives” (“real Americans,” in the vulgar parlance of one particularly noxious demogogue and potential future president) to increasingly discount the wisdom of the “thought leaders,” which in turn makes us more vulnerable to demagoguery (see previous paranthetical), which in turn makes it easier to woo the electorate with a combination of populist fear and fairy-tale hope (and harder to exercise actual leadership and move us in a sustainable direction as a country), which in turns makes us increasingly ungovernable, which in turn causes the “thought leaders” to increasingly throw up their hands and dismiss the common man as an idiot… and so the vicious cycle begins again.
One last Noonan quote:
I’ve never seen the gap wider than it is now. I think it is a chasm. In Washington they don’t seem to be looking around and thinking, Hmmm, this nation is in trouble, it needs help. They’re thinking something else. I’m not sure they understand the American Dream itself needs a boost, needs encouragement and protection. They don’t seem to know or have a sense of the mood of the country.
I, personally, think that while congressional “leaders” (in both parties) are indeed totally clueless, President Obama actually does know the nation is in trouble and needs help. But he doesn’t seem to know how to help it. Moreover — and this is the big surprise and letdown of his administration so far — he doesn’t even seem to know how to talk to us about the trouble we’re in and the help we need. He was supposed to be the liberal Reagan, the second Great Communicator, but instead he’s seemed more like a cross between Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, playing legislative hardball (with surprising effectiveness!) while leading down into an existential malaise without even realizing it. Mind you, I haven’t given up on Obama: I still think he’s the best hope we’ve got, in terms of actual leadership at the national level, and I think the second half of his term, after Republicans increase their power somewhat (and maybe a lot) this November, will be his true test. And I still think it’s possible he’s playing a long game that we’re all not seeing yet, and that all this Obama-related hand-wringing in 2010 will look positively silly in retrospect. But anyway, the point is that, at least for now, at least in most respects, Noonan nails it, and as America’s Secretary of #PANIC!!!!, I commend her for her service to the cause. 🙂
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…and it all went to hell for Peggy when a black man became president. Sometimes I can’t wait to have a white man as president again so all these idiotic white people can quit whining about stuff that has been problems for this country for centuries, they just didn’t notice how fucked up the country was til a black man was elected president.
The threat of nuclear destruction was all but accepted as inevitble in the mid to late 1900’s. There’s no legitimate threat of being wiped out en masse like there was then. Guess what, your kids don’t have to live in America, it’s a big freakin world. The pessimism is from all the fat ass lazy freakin Americans (mostly whites) that have gotten used to doing nothing for themselves and shuffling paper around to create money for themselves, and that isn’t happening anymore. It shouldn’t have been happening the last 30 years. People shouldn’t depend on Xboxes or cable TV or fancy cars or nice meals to make them happy. That’s not freaking happiness those are luxuries that have become the substitute for true happiness.
I loved my childhood and it’s difficult for me to imagine my kids having as great a life as I’ve had, but that’s just because the 80s were so freakin gnarly. But there’s no doubt that my kids will have it much easier than me, just because technology has made life so much easier. I used a typewriter for all my high school papers and a word processor in college. For that alone, I know my kids will have it better.
So, let me get this straight, not only a mainstream/moderate like Noonan (who, as I recall, had a lot of heartfelt, positive things to say about the historical significance of a black man finally being elected president), but centrists like myself and B. Minich and many others on this blog who share a sense of pessimism or at least trepidation about the future, are all a bunch of idiotic, whining, fat ass, lazy racists?
I would be offended, but that’s be like taking umbrage at the crazy guy on the street corner yelling that you’re going to Hell. Instead, I’ll just note that this you’ve just given aid & comfort Right’s belief (mostly overblown and misguided, but not in this case!) that all criticism of Obama — or, in this case, not even criticism of Obama, who I called “the best hope we’ve got” for crissakes, but just pessimistic sentiments about the country’s direction, expressed while Obama is president — will inevitably be portrayed as raaaaaaacist. You demean and debase the very ideas that you express, by stating them in such a ridiculous fashion.
So here’s what doesn’t make sense. I’ve read in multiple places that birth rates increase when Americans feel more economically secure and hopeful of the future, and that birth rates drop when Americans feel less secure about their future. Yet not only me, but many of my friends are popping out little ones (some of them are working on their second, or, *ahem*, their third).
Another example: At our childbirth class the other evening, the instructor mentioned she’s never seen so many pregnancies as this summer.
I’m not saying your feelings are wrong (my own sense of foreboding began around the time the real estate market peaked in 2005, the war in Iraq began sputtering, and Dems gained control of Congress in 2006), but it’s something to ponder. If so many of us are pessimistic about our children having better lives, why are so many of us choosing to procreate — against the trends of what the statisticians tell us?
To me, there is a subtle fault in Noonan’s analysis. It sorta sounds right, it sorta feels accurate, but something about it just seems overblown and disconnected with the almost metaphysical nature of hope that we all seem to still cling to — and which drives us to act as if tomorrow will be alright despite all of our doubts.
I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with AML before, but I agree with AML. It is a fact that more people are having children right now than previous generations, which completely undermines the BS Peggy Noonan et al. white people are saying, and that is proven with the increased birthrates of the last several years.
I didn’t name you, Brendan, as a fat lazy racist. But you are a lawyer and that’s not a good start as far as respectable career choices go. Lawyers are a big part of what has destroyed and continues to destroy this country, and this isn’t a personal shot, it’s just the truth. Strom Thurmond was a raging racist, but I guess that doesn’t matter because his daughter was black. Come on. Peggy Noonan is not a moderate either. She supported the stupid idiotic Bush policies in lock-step that put us in the quagmire we’re in today.
Since Obama has become president, this country has changed dramatically in tone. From Sherry Sherrod to the cop and the black professor to the mexicans getting kicked out of Arizona, to Jeremiah Wright, to the black panthers scaring white people at polling places, to maxine waters and charlie rangle getting dragged through the mud, to the Tea Party rallies with racially charged signs openly and uncondemned airing on Fox News. Somethings going on. Really, nobody sees this? 60% of Republicans believe Obama was born outside of the United States and is not legit. This is not going on with White presidents. It just isn’t. The hoplessness expressed in large part by whites is seeing the Supreme Court just beginning to get balanced out instead of being ALL white as it’s been virtually throughout the history of the country. There’s too much to say about this for one blog post.
Really, nobody sees this? 60% of Republicans believe Obama was born outside of the United States and is not legit. This is not going on with White presidents.
Just wait until Ahnold runs for president!
“It sucks, and I mean sucks, to feel like you’re raising your kids in a country that’s on the brink of, at best, a period of stagnation and/or mild decline — and at worst, something far more frightening. Yet’s that’s precisely how I feel, and I know I’m not alone.”
It has to suck even more strongly to know that, not only are you not alone, you and those others also actively campaigned for and voted for the folk who are taking us further and further down that slippery slope that goes from market downturn to Great Depression … after all, it’s not as if you weren’t warned …
How’s that “best hope we’ve got” working out for you ?
What happened to the Brendan who actually was centrist by US-wide standards, who actually exercised his critical faculties and rapier-wit left, right, and centre ?
“What happened to the Brendan who actually was centrist by US-wide standards, who actually exercised his critical faculties and rapier-wit left, right, and centre ?”
He picked Obama, which should indicate that YOU are the wing nut extremist we all think you are.
Thats not to say that voting for Obama was the only defendable option, but Alasdair’s bafflement about a reasonable, intelligent, rational person making that choice for the many reasonable, rational, intelligent reasons Brendan laid out at the time (and since) is the indicator.
1) Sandy, your constant descriptions of Republicans as white racists is offensive, and frankly dangerous for a variety of reasons.
2) David K: I’m with Alasdair, but my main beef is the utter lack of coverage of say Alvin Greene, or Measure C from Missouri.
Given the fascination with the possibility of Orly Tait winning a primary was worth several posts, surely Mr. Greene actually winning a primary should have been worth at least one post.
A state voted by a margin of nearly 3 to 1 (at least that if you eliminate the two Urban areas of St. Louis and Kansas City) to overturn the key provision of Obamacare, and that isn’t worth a post? Am I supposed to believe that if a state rebuked a Republican so strongly it wouldn’t have been mentioned?
“real Americans,” in the vulgar parlance
Really? In an era in which supposedly objective journalists are using the term “teabaggers” to refer to some of those on the right you are offended by “real Americans”?
Who invented the term “flyover country” to refer to those Americans who live in the heartland and are conservative as opposed to the liberal elites who live on the coast?
Aren’t you a little concerned that our entire Supreme Court and much of our government are dominated by graduates of two elite east coast schools?
Aren’t you a little disgusted by the track record of those elites over the last 30 years?
http://www.brendanloy.com/lrt/2010/08/twitter-rt-dmataconis-white/
http://www.brendanloy.com/lrt/2010/07/friendfeed-alvin-greene-a/
http://www.brendanloy.com/lrt/2010/07/twitter-rt-denverpost-breaking-2/comment-page-1/#comment-8288
Really? In an era in which supposedly objective journalists are using the term “teabaggers” to refer to some of those on the right you are offended by “real Americans”?
Yes. “Teabaggers” is a childish schoolyard taunt. I’m not defending it. It’s immature and inappropriate. But it is nothing more than an insult of a political group to which one is opposed, similar to (though obviously more crass than) calling Obama supporters “O-bots” or (somewhat more similarly on the crassness scale) Ron Paul supporters “Paultards.” It’s distasteful, if funny in a juvenile way, but it isn’t as “vulgar,” in the sense that I mean, as a major-party vice presidential nominee dividing one’s fellow citizens — NOT AS A JOKE, but as actual, genuine campaign rhetoric — into camps of “real” and (implicitly) “fake” Americans.
Aren’t you a little concerned that our entire Supreme Court and much of our government are dominated by graduates of two elite east coast schools?
No, not particularly, not on the face of it.
Aren’t you a little disgusted by the track record of those elites over the last 30 years?
Yes, absolutely. I’ve made that abundantly clear. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to hand the reigns of government over to Joe the Plumber. The fact that we need a better political class doesn’t mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater, and start treating the very fact of being “elite” as a disqualification, and the fact of lacking knowledge, expertise or interest in policy as a qualification.
My bad, it seems that long after his actual election, you did almost mention Mr. Greene as much as Ms. Taitz.
1) OK, but do you condemn the term “fly-over country ” as vulgar and divisive also?
2) the fact of lacking knowledge, expertise or interest in policy as a qualification.
First of all, that’s a pretty dismissive description of the wishes of a wast number of Americans. One might almost call it elitist. Secondly, the right doesn’t endorse a lack of knowledge. Instead they endorse common sense and real world experience. The right doesn’t endorse a lack of expertise, instead they value real world expertise instead of ivory tower expertise. And they certainly don’t endorse a lack of expertise in policy. Just because someone rejects your policies doesn’t mean they have none of their own.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going to hand the reigns of government over to Joe the Plumber
Why not? Why is he any less qualified than Ted Kennedy or John Kerry?
But when you see the tendency of the common man to despise the elite, the educated, the talented simply because he cannot identify with them, alarms go off for me.
See, those of you bemoaning “anti-elitism” have the causation backwards here.
First of all, many Americans reject the concept of an elite, you know the whole “all men are created equal” thing. So they tend to look at self appointed elites with a degree of skepticism.
Secondly, it was the elites who first showed that they cannot identify with ordinary Americans first. The term flyover country was created (specifically to note the fact that the liberal, coastal elites did not identify with average Americans) long before anyone had ever heard of Gov. Palin. What a lot of people on the left forget is that there are a lot of very intelligent people who never went to college. There are a lot of very intelligent people who went to State U.
Does anyone see the irony here?
The “rabid rightwinger” is defending and supporting the average American while the lefties are busy demanding that the proles quiet down and let their betters decide.
The irony, gahrie, is that the average americans support the rightwing, who doesn’t represent the average american. Joe the Plumber was campaigning for McCain because he was worried that Obama was going to raise the taxes on businesses that made $250,000 or more in profit and he had a make believe job that he make believedly owned that made that much, when in fact he was unemployed the whole time, and has never made more than 60k per year and didn’t even have a plumbers license. The only people that are affected by the 2% income tax increase are 1% of the american population. There’s nothing average about that.
@#10, I don’t need to categorize Republicans as a white racist political party, because every minority and most intelligent people know that already. They have a black clown playing their chairman who thinks Obama started the Afghanistan War and we can’t win, which is a position supported by no one in the party, but they can’t strip him of his rank because he’s the only black they’ve got to point out that no matter what anti-minority stance they take they have a black chairman, so it’s okay. Only a true bigot would think there’s anything okay going on in the GOP.
The average American people have been getting the shaft for years, by the hands of both parties. There is nobody for the little guy.
A populist is going to be extremely well positioned. Let’s hope for a good one. (I’d take either Roosevelt, or someone like them) I fear we’ll get a demagogue.
I’ve been pessimistic for years. I think that America will cease her dominance in my lifetime. My hope is that we’ll be eased into a gentle retirement like the British Empire, not a violent catastrophic end like Rome.
Two thoughts to contribute here:
1. I’m still optimistic about the potential for technology to improve life immensely over the next 30 years. We’re not going to get to Star Trek TNG, but things will get better. For example, I do expect that we’ll solve our reliance on non-renewable fuels in that time. And I’m sure there will be some awesome innovations that we can’t even imagine today.
2. The bottom 99% of this country are really the losers of globalization. Our parents were just competing with each other. If you wanted to become a radiologist in 1970, you were competing against American citizens in med school and in practice. Now you’re competing against a global field of applicants to get into med school, and once you get out, doctors in India will do your job for 20% of the money.
From my own point of view, I’ve observed that in one recent year of Rochester Econ’s PhD program, there was not a single American student.
Point is that being an American used to mean access to great economic opportunities as a birth right. Globalization has spread those opportunities across the world.
And there’s no going back. While more progressive tax policy might go some way to equalizing our ridiculous level of income inequality, the average American will never have the same career opportunity set that his/her parents enjoyed.
Oh, and check out the shift in the Beveridge curve: yikes. Things really are structurally worse, at least for now.
I am not a pessimist.
The standard of living for the average American is higher than anywhere else in the world, and there is no signs of that changing.
The biggest problem of the poor in America is not hunger, but obesity.
As things improve, the standard for poverty keeps rising. Today it is possible to have indoor plumbing, electricity, gas, a color TV (often a flatscreen with cable), a fully stocked kitchen, air conditioning, cell phone, Ipod, computer, $200 tennis shoes and still consider yourself poor. The poor today have a higher standard of living than the middle class a generation ago.
Advances in medical are stunning. Today’s children have a real chance at living hundreds of years.
If we could only cure Washington’s obsessions with spending and seizing power, things would indeed be pretty rosy.
Really gahrie? No signs of our standard of living changing? I beg to differ!
The middle class is getting squeezed out of this whole thing. And also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this standard is built on a flimsy house of credit. What happens when THAT bubble collapses?
Our children are going to live for hundreds of years with a higher standard of living than 99% of all the humans who have ever lived.
That sounds pretty optimistic to me.
I don’t buy that either. We’re living at historic highs, and are due for a crash.
Plus, hundreds of years? I think not. I see nothing on the horizon indicating this is a remote possibility. And who would want to live that long anyway, in a world like ours?
B Minich #27 – while our kids may not live to enjoy their 3rd century, there is good reason to believe that they may well live to see their 2nd century …
I would not be surprised if more than half the regular commenters on this blog manage to see their 2nd century …
Unless Obamacare isn’t defeated, of course … if the same folk who have taken the US economy from prosperity to the threshold of Great Depression II manage to stay in power, just as we have seen what they have done to employment in the US, we may unfortunately get to see them presiding over US life expectancy becoming less, for the first time on how many decades ?
Within the broad life science research community it is now taken as a given that extending healthy longevity is serious, meaningful science. Billions of dollars have already been invested into research and development for early stage longevity science. The arguments are over how it will be accomplished, and what is possible to achieve within our lifetimes.
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/08/twenty-minutes-to-argue-that-work-on-radical-life-extension-is-valid-research.php
gahrie #29 – there you go again, gahrie, interjecting rational considerations into a discussion involving David K and Sandy Underpants ! (grin)
This elitist/common man tension has been playing itself out for centuries in this country. Popular imagination recalls George Washington as a semi-common man (Cincinnatus).
I’ll tell you what worries me, in 2004-2006, the GOP was governing badly, and was replaced by the Dems…who are now governing badly, and will probably be replaced by the GOP. If the GOP goes back to governing badly, I’m worried about the likelihood of something REALLY UGLY developing. You’d hope the GOP would remember what brought them to power, but there’s the story of the frog and the scorpion.
BTW, Sandy…didn’t dissent used to be the highest form of patriotism? How did it become racism in just 2 short years?
Actually dissent meant that you were the terrorists 2 years ago all the way back to late 2001.
Well, that’s just great. I go on vacation, and Brendan comes up with a must-read, insightful blog post I mostly agree with. Sorry I’m late to the comment party.
Unlike you, I am at my core a very pessimistic person. In fact, I’m probably one of those “self-punishing people.” But you don’t have to have children (which I don’t, and in all likelihood never will) to agree completely with the parts of the column that you bolded. It may be more general, but it’s still there. You and I both came of age in the 1990s, a time of probably unparalleled prosperity. Now, we are watching everything fall apart, both metaphorically and literally. And from my rural perspective, vs. your urban one, it’s even worse in some areas.
The United States faces not just a political chasm, but a cultural chasm, illustrated by a fact that to me is both trivial and major: Three of the nation’s four largest radio markets do not have a country music station. The culture wars are coming to a full boil when we can least afford it, and solutions would inevitably be denounced by at least one balkanized segment of the populace.
You and I (and even Ms. Noonan) may disagree on the specifics of how all of this came to be, but we both realize it is there. The question is if that is anything more than “a start.”
You know, Brendan, this is another thing (and why I”m becoming more and more convinced we may have been separated at birth . . . you know, if I had been hidden away and cryogenically frozen for a year afterwards) – I am not a pessimist by nature. I’ve always looked at life (and still do in many ways) and progress as “dude, this is great! We have an amazing future ahead!”
But there’s been a sense in my mind too, that learning about 1929 instilled in me, that we may be close to the end of all of this. The tech bubble (which I figured out – it wasn’t that hard unless you were a dot com investor, apparently) really got me thinking, wondering why that didn’t hit the world in general that way. It doesn’t surprise me at all that this stuff happens.
See you in the Dark Ages! 😉