Noonan asks: are wheels coming off the trolley and trolley off the tracks?

Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan has been gently critical of the Bush administration, implying that his leadership is flawed and his perspective both narrow and shallow. In this column, she goes a step further and questions whether ANY president has the depth and integrity to govern effectively these days...as the "wheels come off the trolley and the trolley comes off the track" not only in DC, but seemingly across the country, and the world. Noonan articulates an uneasy feeling about where we're headed in an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable world.

My question: do you think the "wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks" as we hurtle onward? Is Noonan's fear shared by more and more thoughtful people?

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/

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>

Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there's no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we're leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay. A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma's house to build a strip mall; our media institutions imploding--the spectacle of a great American newspaper, the New York Times, hurtling off its own tracks, as did CBS. The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them. Senators who seem owned by someone, actually owned, by an interest group or a financial entity. Great churches that have lost all sense of mission, and all authority. Do you have confidence in the CIA? The FBI? I didn't think so.

But this recounting doesn't quite get me to what I mean. I mean I believe there's a general and amorphous sense that things are broken and tough history is coming.

have so much power. Today we have a drunken, mentally ill man destroying this country.

But it is leadership that this country needs!!!

People would feel much better about the world with a real leader like John Kerry, Howard Dean, Al Gore or Wesley Clarke as our President.

And it would be better.

I lay almost all of the fear and concern about current events right at the doorstep of this disgusting, election stealing shithead and his minions in the oval office.

... for a long time, and neither Democrat nor Republican administration have adequately prepared for "the crash..."

eventually it'll crack.

How's that for "optimism"?

I won't bother to read Noonan's drivel, except to point out that it seems tied into the cult of personality surrounding Bush. War in Iraq going badly? Homeland security not effective? Deficit getting too big? Just blame it all on some amorphous boogey man that is causing everything in the world to become dysfunctional. Note that this absolves Bush of blame for ANY of the things she's alluded to, since he's just another hapless victim of forces beyond anyone's control.

Noonan doesn't absolve Bush of much of anything--quite the opposite. Also, it's too easy to accuse those who disagree with you of being disengenuous, especially before you've bothered to hear them out.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110007427

The president is like anyone else: He can look back at the last few years and see that he's made mistakes. Who hasn't? Mistakes of judgment, mistakes of approach. Some of the mistakes in the president's case would have grown out of human miscalculation. Others perhaps grew out of vanity, of a largeness of ego. It's not hard to make a list. There were mistakes of judgment, such as Social Security. Mr. Bush decided to reform the bedrock entitlement of modern America even though, while most thought reform important, few thought it urgent. Why would he do this? And in the middle of a war and an uncertain economic climate?

<snip>

There were mistakes of . . . perhaps philosophy is the word. He will declare democracy now, for all the world, the end of history and the beginning of an era of endless bliss. Why? George Bush is a Texan, and Texans dream big.

<snip>

This is all human. But all these decisions can be questioned. In 1986, George W. Bush reached a crisis point in his life and changed what wasn't working. He dug deep and got serious. He got humble. He questioned himself. He can do it again, and should.

People can't stand change. They fear and hate it. If someone disagrees with you on this, move their coffee mug to another room and see what they do when they can't find it. Many people react to things out of their control by attempting to control something else. Government is an extreme example of this behavior.

Govenments are monstrous bureaucracies that attempt to plan for budgets and elections years ahead of time. Unfortunately for them, there are too many uncontrollable factors involved to do this accurately. However, this does not dissuade them from trying. As long as the appearance of control is maintained, citizens with a similar mentality can feel secure, that their government is "in control." It is only when government is unable to maintain this illusion that peoples' trust in the government's ability to provide security begins to affect the populace, depending on how directly the government's failing affects them and their own personal tolerance to feeling out of control. In the case of the current administration, the consecutive unconcealable failures of its policy and membership over time has pulled the curtain on the illusion of security, and there are very few left who are not aware of this.

What is broken is the idea that bush's government can provide us the security we want and need. It doesn't mean the end for America.

It was all smoke and mirrors. No substance. A dream backed by a political party that bought into and then became a puppet for the propaganda. Im amazed that so many can be so wrong on just about every issue. It has remarkable similarities to the Germans during the Nazi regime.

But then again I've been prediciting America's demise for fifteen years now. And sadly, I think that we've probably sped ahead of my timetable.

I think that we are going to witness the decline and fall of the American Empire. I don't agree with Noohnan about the specifics, because some, like churches, I don't attend, some because I think that she is flat out wrong. But I do agree with her overall premise that this country is off the tracks and headed for oblivion, or at least the Dark Ages II.

Too much convergence of bad shit coming down. The corporate controlled government, crony capitialism, a muzzled media, Peak Oil, war potentially without end, massive debt, global climate change, all of this and more is pointing in just one direction, our demise as a country.

Can we turn this handcart around? Sure, but it is going to take everybody's help, and the willingness of the American public to make some tough decisions and some tough sacrifice. But if we don't do this, we're going to be plunged into chaos and ruin. I'm preparing for that myself, and will probably survive. But I really don't want to see it happen.

Reagan was the quintessential "wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks..."

Why weren't you worried about it then, Ms. "What I Saw at the Revolution?"

the warranty has expired.. :)

crap. How she got to be the darling of right wing politics is a mystery to me. Half of her sentences aren't even sentences.

has lost faith it means a lot of others have also. Stick a fork in the shrubmeister. He's cooked.

of a train that has been falling apart since 1981?

Her premise is that terrorism, avian flu, hurricanes are too much to be managed and that the world is falling apart and has gone beyond a crisis point.

I think this is a false premise. It allows her to suggest that the wheels coming off is because the world is in end days and beyond any president's control. It also absolves the Bush admin of their own part in causing real problems (massive deficits and war).

The Bush Admin has promoted an atmosphere of fear in order to manipulate the populace. She is suggesting that we are in danger from all sides and that the fear is real.

Very convenient. Also allows her to excuse those corrupt people (such as DeLay) for their "I got mine" attitude which she suggests is an end times mentality.

When Clinton was in power he promoted an atmosphere of good will and positivity. I do not believe, at my gut level, that the world is a significantly more frightening or horrible place than it was eight years ago.

Noonan suggests that a Bush induced apocalyptic state of mind is a reality. That fear may be her demon but it is not mine. I grew up in a navy town and remember elementary school nuclear drills where we all closed the windows and got under our desks. This state of anxiety is no different now than it was then. My elementary school never was hit by a nuclear bomb.

These times are only scary if you believe what the Bush Admin tells you. I, for one, do not. They are not credible.

This article is insidious because by saying problems are too big to be solved she absolves all the incompetents and the greedy and the power grabbers and the cronies of their contributions toward making our world a more difficult place. Peggy needs to (1)stop making excuses for corruption and (2)stop promoting the Apocalypse.

She must be growing up.