Just what I was thinking, but more eloquently, Peggy Noonan:
I am thankful for something we’re not seeing. One of the weirdest, most perceptually jarring things about the economic crisis is that everything looks the same. We are told every day and in every news venue that we are in Great Depression II, that we are in a crisis, a cataclysm, a meltdown, the credit crunch from hell, that we will lose millions of jobs, and that the great abundance is over and may never return. Three great investment banks have fallen while a fourth totters, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 31% in six months. And yet when you free yourself from media and go outside for a walk, everything looks . . . the same.
Everyone is dressed the same. Everyone looks as comfortable as they did three years ago, at the height of prosperity. The mall is still there, and people are still walking into the stores and daydreaming with half-full carts in aisle 3. Everyone’s still overweight. (An evolutionary biologist will someday write a paper positing that the reason for the obesity epidemic of the past decade is that we were storing up food like squirrels and bears, driven by an unconscious anthropomorphic knowledge that a time of great want was coming. Yes, I know it will be idiotic.) But the point is: Nothing looks different.
In the Depression people sold apples on the street. They sold pencils. Angels with dirty faces wore coats too thin and short and shivered in line at the government surplus warehouse. There was the Dust Bowl, and the want of the cities. Captains of industry are said to have jumped from the skyscrapers of Wall Street. (Yes, those were the good old days. Just kidding!) People didn’t have enough food.
They looked like a catastrophe was happening.
We do not. It’s as if the news is full of floods but we haven’t seen it rain.
If you didn’t read the news, would you be afraid?
The rest is here.
Very interesting!! I’ve often thougth the same thing…
I agree that perhaps the declarations of Great Depression II are early or extreme, but Noonan’s relative dismissal seems a bit early and extreme itself. Certainly we Americans too often trust the overdone pronouncements and hyped-up rumors pumped out by mainstream media, but we also far too often have a ridiculous sense of invincibility that blinds us to the very real possibility that things, even when they have already gotten bad, could get worse.
Her observations about our current comfort level, her argument about our safety nets, and the insights from her economist friend are all reasonable. I learned from the article. But these are still mainly predictions.
I’m not saying we should all be desperately “afraid” or buy everything the news is telling us. But I would suggest that we take the opportunity to be reminded that we should feel much less personally invincible than we often feel (about our finances, about our economy, and about our nation). Part of healthy biblical fear is that it drives us away from ourselves and our own resources and drives us to our ultimate resource and refuge. And in that sense I don’t mind being afraid.
“wait for it….wait for it…..”
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