A Separate Peace (Peggy Noonan)

OpinionJournal.com ^ | October 27, 2005 | Peggy Noonan

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

America is in trouble--and our elites are merely resigned.

It is not so hard and can be a pleasure to tell people what you see. It's harder to speak of what you think you see, what you think is going on and can't prove or defend with data or numbers. That can get tricky. It involves hunches. But here goes.

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."

snip

That's what I think is going on with our elites. There are two groups. One has made a separate peace, and one is trying to keep the boat afloat. I suspect those in the latter group privately, in a place so private they don't even express it to themselves, wonder if they'll go down with the ship. Or into bad territory with the trolley.

[jpl]

We're still in the relatively early stages of a new World War that is probably going to continue to get worse for a while before it gets better. Of course there's a sense out there that "the trolley is coming off the tracks"! If people didn't have that sense it would mean that there was something seriously wrong with society's psychological state. I guarantee you it's the same way people felt during the ascension of Hitler and Stalin.

We've managed to come through dark days before, and I have no doubt whatsoever that we will again, but not before experiencing a lot more pain and suffering first.

[Desdemona]

Christians have become part of what's wrong with the culture in America, as we have bought into the "rights" attitude to have everything here and now. Our children have become part of the worldly teen culture and we are not teaching them our Christian values.

what I see as a school nurse is that many of the Christian parents are just as Narcissistic as the liberals.

Very true. And when you do live by Christian values, dress modestly and work hard, you are called "eccentric" by managers and co-workers. No one ever said living as a Christian would be easy, but eccentric?

[Dawgreg]

Amen, Brother Jim! *~*

[Rokke]

"Look at Bush's abysmal polling numbers about Iraq for instance. Look at how Americans feel about that war in general. How in the world do you explain those numbers? It's simple --- the old media is still very effective. Don't keep fooling yourself!...........By the way, this liberal media influence extends to the lam-*ss and generally anti-Bush monologues on Leno and Letterman, Stewart, etc. Get real! The old sicko liberal/socialist media still rules over most minds in America. That is a FACT. "

I agree with all of that. And I turn 39 in three days. But since you bring up the topic of age, I've just got to ask where you've been in the last 40 years. Did you somehow miss how the media portrayed Vietnam? How about Reagan? The fact that the mainstream media has been lying to the American public is not new. What IS new is the fact that increasingly, the American public is turning the mainstream media off. The only thing the media has left is its worthless polls, and increasingly, people are beginning to see through those as well. Every single major (and of course liberal) newspaper is suffering from an increasingly huge loss in readership and ad revenue. Viewership of the nightly network news has been plunging just as fast. Foxnews now has more viewers on any given day than CNN, MSNBC and CNBC combined. "News" magazines like Time and Newsweek carry almost NONE of the influence they used to, and join the rest of the dinosaur media in its freefall.

That the media is feeding lies to the American public is a fact older than both of us combined. But you appear to be missing the fact that the monopoly they once held is coming to an end. I may only be a year short of 40, but that doesn't prevent me from realizing that all that is evil hasn't popped up in my lifetime and we aren't witnessing our nation's last days. Wise people have been predicting that since our founding fathers did their thing in Philadelphia. And the only thing all those prognosticators of doom have in common is that they are dead and this country continues to thrive.

[KC_Conspirator]

I disagree with this article. I bet many Americans felt this way during the Civil War. We are only dealing with a fading ideology born out of the 60s. I believe that with time and new immigrants, old hatreds and old Kennedys (one in the same) will die off.

[beyond the sea]

The only thing that matters to me is that the old lying media is still effective. I want the old media dead and gone.

I'm close to 59 and I've been studying media since I was about 14, for longer than you have been alive.

We basically agree on all of this, but please do not underestimate the continuing negative influence of the old media. If everyone felt like you, there would be no folks like Brent Bozell and others around to help expose their prevariacations.

You must sound the alarm, NOT find your warm happiness in the false thoughts that the old media is dying, irrelevant or dead. They still make things happen and they need to be snuffed once and for all.

Take care.

***

The old established/liberal/socialist media is America's most ruthless, relentless, and destructive enemy.

***

[Rokke]

"I want the old media dead and gone."

I couldn't agree more.

"We basically agree on all of this,"

I agree that we agree.

"You must sound the alarm, NOT find your warm happiness in the false thoughts that the old media is dying, irrelevant or dead."

I won't ask you to, but if you reviewed my posts on this site you will see that I am very active in "sounding the alarm". I hate the media. The mainstream media has easily replaced lawyers as the most damaging influence in this nation. But I completely disagree that the media is winning or even gaining in this battle. They are clearly losing. The war isn't over yet, but we are witnessing the most positive steps in the right direction in decades. The internet has removed the media monopoly on information dissemination. And once they are exposed for what they are, they will NEVER recover the influence they once had.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

The basic problem is that what passes for the "elites" is pretty much the bottom sediments of our society.

Kakistocracy is the word, I think.

[neutrino]

The entire article is well worth reading. The trolley is off the tracks; however, there remain quite a number of passengers who aren't aware of the problem yet.

Not to worry. Events will help them develop greater insight.

[GOPJ]

Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress.

Peggy's right. This is happening, people are hunkering down.

[My2Cents]

Perceptive comments. I agree.

[MikeHu]

As much as the new technologies have made it possible for voices that have never been heard to be heard, for those who have had easy access to the public, the danger is being overexposed -- and most have not adapted to these new realities.

It is much like the human body has evolved over million of years to covet every calorie it can, and in a short period of time, there is an excess of food, shelter and clothing -- and people's first impulse is to overconsume, get as much as they can, while the going's good, thinking the abundance and prosperity will soon disappear. So they haven't developed a shutdown switch to prevent them from gorging themselves into useless vulnerability.

So people given a microphone think they now have the power to shout expletives -- as their freedom of expression, of who they really are. Others who have the cameras turned on them, immediately take to obscene gestures and stripping naked -- with their 15 minutes of fame. And so with the writers, given easy access to publication, and knowing of the easy access of others, feel they must "weigh in" daily or momentarily, with their august and eagerly anticipated pronouncements.

The function of publications previously was to make them a fairly scarce resource -- and so writing and words got out judiciously. With today's abundance, many are misled into thinking more quantity is what is still necessary -- when in fact, the abundance creates the critical mass for the quantum leap into better, and not simply more writing, more opinions, more reading for reading's sake.

[xsmommy]

they fixed the error; i saw "mote" this AM, and just went back and it says "moat" now.

[thoughtomator]

I'd hate to have a moat in my eye, I've got enough trouble just with the contact lenses.

[xsmommy]

i was glad to see your post, and the one other, talking about spell checker, because i was afraid i had imagined it earlier, since it is no longer there.

[WangoPundit]

"I don't beleive in a fate that will befall us no matter what we do. But I do believe in a fate that will befall us if we do nothing."

Ronald Wilson Reagan (I sure miss him)

[teawithmisswilliams]

Take a look at the blue and red 2004 election map. We aren't losing.

And yet we are literally being overrun with third-worlders and our President and Congress are doing NOTHING about it.