Peggy Noonan and “A Separate Peace”

By Nicholas Stix Have you or has anyone close to you made a separate peace for yourself? I just sent the following note to a friend. Dear (name deleted), You likely have already read this, and if you're the person who turned me on to it, I apologize. But on the off chance that you haven't, I'll gladly risk clogging up your inbox. Though long smitten with Peggy Noonan's ravishing physical beauty and literary style, I had taken her to be a Polyanna. Imagine my surprise upon reading the following essay. In recent years, my estimation of rhetoric has continually slid. We live in a Golden Age of Republican Propaganda, and all propaganda is fool's gold. And yet... And yet. Noonan reminded me of the power that a well-turned phrase can have, even when describing something that one has long known in more prosaic terms. Regards, Nicholas

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…." If I am right that trolley thoughts are out there, and even prevalent, how are people dealing with it on a daily basis? I think those who haven't noticed we're living in a troubling time continue to operate each day with classic and constitutional American optimism intact. I think some of those who have a sense we're in trouble are going through the motions, dealing with their own daily challenges. And some--well, I will mention and end with America's elites. Our recent debate about elites has had to do with whether opposition to Harriet Miers is elitist, but I don't think that's our elites' problem. This is. 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…." Not all of course. There are a lot of people--I know them and so do you--trying to do work that helps, that will turn it around, that can make it better, that can save lives. They're trying to keep the boat afloat. Or, I should say, get the trolley back on the tracks….

The piece runs 2,018 exquisite words, one mixed metaphor notwithstanding. Read all of them. This ain’t propaganda.