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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."
-- Peggy Noonan, "A Separate Peace: America is in trouble--and our elites are merely resigned" for The Wall Street Journal
In the LJ World, we would understand by this op-ed piece that Ms. Noonan has gone a little emo. Some of us might say that she is just starting to smell the coffee. That there is something unsettling in the air, that we are on shifting grounds, with so many major and critical problems breaking out, seems obviously true, but American history is filled with crises and turning points. Americans may be in for some hard times, but the sky is probably not really falling. Even if all might already seem fallen to the likes of our hapless primate-protagonist.
And it is interesting to see a conservative Republican, a devotee of Reagan no less, use rather peevishly the phrase, "I got mine, you get yours!" I thought that was one of their informal slogans. Didn't they run on that in 1984?
xXx
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."
-- Peggy Noonan, "A Separate Peace: America is in trouble--and our elites are merely resigned" for The Wall Street Journal
In the LJ World, we would understand by this op-ed piece that Ms. Noonan has gone a little emo. Some of us might say that she is just starting to smell the coffee. That there is something unsettling in the air, that we are on shifting grounds, with so many major and critical problems breaking out, seems obviously true, but American history is filled with crises and turning points. Americans may be in for some hard times, but the sky is probably not really falling. Even if all might already seem fallen to the likes of our hapless primate-protagonist.
And it is interesting to see a conservative Republican, a devotee of Reagan no less, use rather peevishly the phrase, "I got mine, you get yours!" I thought that was one of their informal slogans. Didn't they run on that in 1984?
