Written ten years ago. Right once. And counting down to the second time. Read carefully. There will be a test.
In the summer of 1998 Peggy Noonan wrote this essay for the magazine Forbes ASAP. It was published in the Nov. 30, 1998 issue There Is No Time, There Will Be TimePosted by Vanderleun at June 18, 2008 11:44 AM | TrackBackSomething's up. And deep down, where the body meets the soul, we are fearful. We fear, down so deep it hasn't even risen to the point of articulation, that with all our comforts and amusements, with all our toys and bells and whistles... we wonder if what we really have is... a first-class stateroom on the Titanic. Everything's wonderful, but a world is ending and we sense it.
I don't mean: "Uh-oh, there's a depression coming," I mean: We live in a world of three billion men and hundreds of thousands of nuclear bombs, missiles, warheads. It's a world of extraordinary germs that can be harnessed and used to kill whole populations, a world of extraordinary chemicals that can be harnessed and used to do the same.
Three billion men, and it takes only half a dozen bright and evil ones to harness and deploy.
What are the odds it will happen? Put it another way: What are the odds it will not? Low. Nonexistent, I think.
When you consider who is gifted and crazed with rage... when you think of the terrorist places and the terrorist countries... who do they hate most? The Great Satan, the United States. What is its most important place? Some would say Washington. I would say the great city of the United States is the great city of the world, the dense 10-mile-long island called Manhattan, where the economic and media power of the nation resides, the city that is the psychological center of our modernity, our hedonism, our creativity, our hard-shouldered hipness, our unthinking arrogance.
If someone does the big, terrible thing to New York or Washington, there will be a lot of chaos and a lot of lines going down, a lot of damage, and a lot of things won't be working so well anymore. And thus a lot more... time. Something tells me we won't be teleconferencing and faxing about the Ford account for a while.
The Wall Street Journal runs her column every week. Mostly it is incomprehensible, but it get a breeze from the left when I try to flog my way through it.
Why does the WSJ run her. Does she have a thing with Murdoch?
Posted by: Fat Man at June 18, 2008 1:03 PMDon't forget her column of October '05, A Separate Peace.
Posted by: Morenuancedthanyou at June 18, 2008 5:15 PMAnd if such a thing happens; similar men in Tehran, and in Damascus, and in Amman, and in Riyadh, and in Mecca, and in Medina, and in Islamabad, and in Cairo, and in Kabul, and in Kuala Lumpur, and in Djakarta, won't be attending to their daily concerns either. Ever again. There will be, however, a sudden need in Hell for half a billion pitchforks.
Posted by: Fletcher Christian at June 18, 2008 5:54 PMI beg to differ. Noonan has a gift of picking up on an obscure event overlooked by others and relating it to the larger events surrounding it to reveal a perspective missed by those who only see the larger picture.
I count her biography of Ronald Reagan among the four best books written about him.
I recently read "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" by Joan Didion and was struck by the similarity in their writing styles.
Posted by: Yanni Znaio at June 18, 2008 10:47 PMInteresting that you point this out, Gerald. Noonan seems to have reflected on a similar sentiment I had, albeit a little later than her.
I remember one Saturday evening, late summer, when my husband and I were eating a pleasant Italian dinner with someone I worked for and her husband, here in South TX. There was barely a cloud in that sky at dusk, and everything seemed so... perfect. I remember thinking to myself that evening, "No, this is too perfect. Too comfortable. Too peaceful. There has to be a storm coming after this..." But I never said a word about it to those at the table... not even my husband.
Three days later, the Twin Towers fell. My brother lost a NYPD buddy at the Towers. My cousin lost just about all of her co-workers. (She was in NJ that day.) I sank into a despair that lasted for weeks. Now that I think about it, I don't believe it has left me since then.
Oh yes, you can bet that I'm keeping an eye on that rat at the sidewalk. Of course, I'm looking out for the men knocking at my door and begging my family to get the Hell out of dodge before the flames come.
Posted by: newton at June 19, 2008 1:59 PM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.