Peggy Noonan sees the darkness approach

Peggy Noonan, who once wrote speeches for Presidents (Reagan and Bush I) now writes columns for the Wall Street Journal. She's worth reading, not only for here smooth and elegant writing, but mostly for here refreshing clarity of vision and occasionally unexpected viewpoint.

In today's article she raises a disconcerting note, coming from a member of the sunny Reagan team. Noonan senses that there are dark times approaching, and finds that others agree.

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."

There are people out there who are quite sure of it, but the "end-of-the-world" crowd is always out there and never right, at least so far. What Peggy is feeling is a pessimism or, more telling, a despondency where you would not expect it. I think I know what she is saying and suspect I agree, with both the observation that people are becoming despondent about the future, and with the belief that they are right.

Perhaps what Noonan is sensing is related to the aging of the Baby Boomer generation. The "elites" within whom Noonan senses this unease are generally Boomers, and we are getting up to the age when the past looks a lot happier than the future. I agree that the modern culture is shallow and decadent, but my grandfather felt much the same way about the youth culture of my era (which, on reflection, actually was shallow and decadent.) 

She may also be sensing the end of the era of US domination in the world, which was never really all it was cracked up to be. The first decades after WWII were quite dark in outlook, what with the nuclear sword hanging over us all. decade and a half since the end of the Cold War have not been all that rosy, that we should be too depressed by a change.

Peggy didn't even mention climate change, the big cloud on the horizon for many folks. The bird flu is another. That the US is losing whatever "edge" it enjoyed in the last 50 years is not unexpected and probably good news to some, but the concern over the future is global. I've been following this issue since the '70's when I was a student of geology and climate, when there was not even the faintest whiff of politics around the issue, and have long expected that climatic disaster would be a significant part of the 21st century. There have been great global disasters before, however, great droughts and floods, along with crop failures and pandemics and other horrors, and the world has survived all.

The latter years of the 20th century may turn out to be the aberrant era, when global diseases seemed under control, and the weather was relatively benign, and wars were contained to regional affairs. Perhaps the blue-mood Peggy has perceived is a realization that we have been living in illusion, convinced that the horrors of earlier centuries were past us. In that case it is best for all that we wake up from our happy dream and face the reality of mankind's ongoing troubles. We are better prepared to face them than our ancestors were, and have no cause for despair.

Nevertheless, there is a dark mood afoot these days. As someone who struggles with depression, I have learned to be sensitive to these influences. By perverse good fortune, this may be a helpful thing for me, personally, and perhaps for others. My natural inclination towards contrarianism drives me to adopt a hopeful outlook now that the self-declared "elites" are feeling blue. I wonder if others out there, at odds with the intelligencia and cultural elites, will have the same reaction. If folks within the beltway are getting depressed about the future, I wonder if it isn't really "morning in America" again.