Peggy Noonan, former Ronald Reagan speechwriter, has a really good, really depressing Zeitgeist piece in the WSJ that generalizes from her personal slice of the Zeit’s Geist, which is interesting in itself.

She says that the “elite” assumes the wheels are coming off the trolley and there’s nothing we can do about it. Oh, she spends a short paragraph at the end saying that there “are a lot of people … trying to do work that helps,” but that comes across as a mere hand wave.

The piece seems to me to be broken in the middle. After several excellent paragraphs sketching the magnitude of the problems facing us (“You say we don’t understand Africa? We don’t even understand Canada!”), leading up to the conclusion that it’s not just the president who’s overwhelmed but the presidency itself, she then continues as if this is just how it seems. But if the wheels are really coming off, what do we do? Noonan blames the elites because they’re supposed to “dig us out and lead us,” but if the wheels are coming off, there’s not much the trolley driver can do. Is this something leaders can get us out of? Or is the system itself really in as bad a shape as it seems? I wish Noonan had been clearer about her view here, if only because if Peggy “Morning in America”¹ Noonan thinks America’s finished, well, that’s news. (A smaller-minded person than I might suggest that our current feeling of hopelessness is in part due to five years of untrammeled Republicanism.)

I think there’s truth to Noonan’s description. I do feel that my children will not be as privileged as I am, that America will not be the world’s only superpower in a way that actually lets us exert that power, that we’re living on borrowed gas and yuans, that even if we get back on track, I don’t like my ticket’s destination.

But I think that’s also why so many of us are so invested in the Internet. That’s the fresh start we’ve been looking for. It’s a world that’s more connected, more creative and more fair than the real world. (Completely connected? Completely fair? Of course not.)

Unfortunately, if we get the Internet right and the real world wrong, kids continue to starve.

1Note: Noonan did not write the “Morning in America” phrase that became associated with Reagan. That came from a 1984 campaign ad. [Tags: PeggyNoonan despair america internet DigitalCulture]

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