Stay Cool, America
Peggy Noonan's latest column hinges on Fareed Zakaria's recent essay in Time magazine. There, Zarakia contrasts India -- "brimming with hope and faith" and "animal spirits and ambition" -- with downtrodden America, where our "can-do country is convinced that it can't." Noonan notes: "Sixty-three percent of Americans say they do not think they will be able to maintain their current standard of living."
"And yet," she intones. "We may be witnessing a new political dynamism. The Tea Party's rise reflects anything but fatalism, and maybe even a new high-spiritedness. After all, they're only two years old and they just saved a political party and woke up an elephant."
True enough. And yet: let's not put too great a psychic burden on the backs of the tea partiers. Let's not intensify the collective fantasy that there are two alternatives in life -- depressive pessimism or manic optimism. For a variety of reasons, Americans are predisposed to feel like we're slipping into decline unless we're #1 and gaining. It's a sensation that can reach from the smallest to the largest scale in American life, powered by our taste for risk, our capacity for resilience, our love of all-or-nothing play, and our not-much-discussed understanding that we're less suited to bear the burdens of ruling the world (if not ruling it) because we're best suited to lead it by example. Plus, we've inherited a little bit of Europe's longstanding pathology of declinism, driven by the notion that History is linear, inexorable, and progressive.
Manic optimists and depressive pessimists agree in a Manichean way that you're with them or you're against them -- that there's no middle ground in which we can expand or contract modestly and confidently without putting our flourishing at risk. If we buy into this way of thinking, we're in big trouble. We'll lose our cool and we'll lose our nerve, at home and abroad. Obama was greatly admired as a candidate when he, in stark contrast to John McCain, appeared to keep his calm in an alert, engaged, and focused way. But the way he's expanded government as President is so in keeping with manic optimism that it renders moot whatever commanding calm used to be associated with his character. As is clear, when the times call for it, I'm all in favor of boisterous, even angry politics. You can't flatten out human nature and call it maturity. But let's reaffirm that the tea party wave points beyond a bipolar worldview.
Keep Calm and Carry On? Yes, but that's a bit old world. Stay Cool, America.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Stay Cool, America
Agreed. Americans tend to think in terms of winning or losing. That competitive nature drives us to excel, but it can also subdue our efforts when results are disappointing.
Whatever happens, just keep truckin'.
Aug '10
Re: Stay Cool, America
Politics is just one face of multi-faceted whole; the re-emerging American spirit, crystallizing before our eyes. A Great Awakening is taking place, and just in time.
America is the last nation strong enough to resist the Marxist/collectivist/statist "new world order" spoken of by Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinijad, Soros, the U.N., E.U., et al; the system largely in place throughout the world.
Quite right, James, faith and a cool head is what's needed. Violence won't get us where we want to go.
May '10
Re: Stay Cool, America
Optimism and pessimism are reactions to evaluations. It may be appropriate to be pessimistic given our current politico-economic conditions. Optimism can be a result of an erroneous assessment.
Aug '10
Re: Stay Cool, America
I am pessimistic when I look around to the Huffpo and The Root and see them doing a journolist meme against Clarence Thomas today.
What kind of country patronizes websites that are wasting their bandwidth on stuff like this ? Sort of like that TMZ show, of which I only see the last two minutes waiting for a show and wonder about the snarkiness and sleaze when the logo signoff chirps "I'm a lawyer !" . So's the president and most of the Congress !
Jul '10
Re: Stay Cool, America
Very insightful piece. I disagree with this assessment because for the past three decades or so (and longer) that has been the attitude of the conservative side. Stay cool, the leftists will make a mistake and we'll be able to undo the damage done by them. If that is what you're driving at, that staying cool is equivalent to acquiescence, then we are surely on the road to perdition. At Tea Parties, the common theme is "I'm mad as hell,. and I'm not going to take this anymore!!" Coolness has not mobilized the common man and woman who have seen the leftists (and supposed conservatives - Peggy made a great point there-see below) in government get into this predicament where the fundamental nature between state and citizen has changed coupled with the attendant debt that such a program incurs.
I know and respect some of the establishmentarians, but after dinner, on the third glass of wine, when they get misty-eyed about Reagan and the old days, they are not, I think, weeping for him and what he did but for themselves and who they were. Back when they were new and believed in something...
Jul '10
Re: Stay Cool, America
Manic pessimist here. We will put Republicans in power again for the next two years and they will, for the third time in my adult life, cynically milk the public with that Washington machine a bit less vigorously than the Democrats and expect a happy 2012. Add a cabinet position. A major entitlement. Fool us once....
The Tea Party is the difference. I am watching these guys get smarter faster better every day. The flaccid cynicism of the professional politician smothering the public will now face the most vicious primary challenges since Teddy and Bull Moose days.
Aug '10
Re: Stay Cool, America
flaccid cynicism of the professional politician..........smothering the public.. imagery rythym nice