Unless you’ve spent the last several decades in a coma, you’ve surely heard your quota of “doom talk.” You may even have contributed to the supply. There’s always something to fear, isn’t there? An American with no apocalyptic forebodings is unequipped for cocktail-party conversation. If you’re the sort who throws such parties, or is occasionally invited to one, that’s something to ponder.
Terror of nuclear war was the bug-bear of my youth. Have the head-under-the-desk practices continued to this day, or have they lapsed since the Soviet Union bit the big one? I haven’t kept in touch with scholastic fashions, and there are no minors conveniently near. If they’ve lapsed, perhaps the “yellow peril” could be used to make them fashionable once again.
Eco-catastrophism dominated the Seventies and Eighties. We were running out! Of what, you ask? Well, it changed with the seasons. At one point it was oil. Then it shifted to iron and other metals. Then it was the ozone layer, or acid rain. Then it was species. Did you know that 43 trillion species go extinct every day? No, really!
(Nota Bene: If you want to sling bullshit without sounding like a jerk, begin your baseless proclamations with “Did you know that.” It has an immediate and powerful effect on the credulous. Also, it prods know-it-alls into either arguing with you, or amplifying your statement with a dollop of their own bullshit. Great for breaking the ice at parties!)
The decades have marched on by without any of the older phantasms coming to pass. There’ve been successors, of course. Overpopulation. Plastic in the oceans. Global warming. The homeless crisis. Invasive species. Impending plagues of Marburg or Ebola. (Eat your heart out, COVID!) And everything gives you cancer.
At any given time, there’s some nightmarish-if-nebulous eventuality the doom-talkers insist that we must fear to the depths of our souls. And the Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent State is supposed to combat it, whatever it is, with all its forces.
I won’t speak for anyone but myself, but I’m worn out. My supply of fear energy is down to zero. The doom-talkers can prattle on as they like. I’m done listening to them.
Not that I ever paid them much attention, really.
Today’s chapter in doomerism is the failure of the “American Dream.” Few people bother to make that vision specific, which probably aids the doomers in their campaign to make us fear its disappearance. In any case, the doom-talk is out there and plentiful.
Broadly conceived, the American Dream is about ever-advancing prosperity for one’s family and one’s progeny. It’s future-oriented: however well you’re doing at the moment, you hope for more and better in the days to come, both for yourself and for your children. The doomers rant that the Dream has dissolved – that the realist’s outlook isn’t for more but for less. Young Americans who have labored in the hope of realizing the Dream are out of luck; their predecessor generations have “used it up.”
Sounds a lot like the oil-depletion talk of the Seventies, doesn’t it?
The reality is quite a bit different. Americans are already living the Dream. The Gross Domestic Product is over $42 trillion. Divide that by 330 million Americans; what’s the quotient? $127,000 per man, woman, or child, isn’t it? No, it’s not uniformly distributed, but only about 10% of the national population – yes, counting the illegals, too – is left out of the mix. Nearly all the rest of us partake of the greatest explosion in productivity in human history. By historical standards, nine Americans out of every ten are rich, rich, rich.
What’s that you say? You don’t feel rich? You’d rather not have to work? You’re aggravated that you have bills to pay? Junior is giving you static because you won’t buy him new $200 jeans and $300 sneakers? Buck up, dude. When did you last miss a meal? Was it good food or leavings from a dumpster? Is your home well heated? How many cars does your family have? How old are they and how well do they run? Is your wife’s closet anywhere near to empty? How about her shoe collection?
The Dream was never about each of us becoming as rich as Croesus. It was about getting to where 90% of us are now: comfortable, secure, and able to afford some modest luxuries. Yes, we still have to work, but that was always part of the bargain. And about that work: unless you’re a coal miner or an open-ocean fisherman, it’s probably less strenuous and far less dangerous than anything our predecessors had to endure.
A big part of disappearing-Dream fear arises from our worries for our kids. Some of them lack initiative. Others lack direction. Some of the occupational possibilities we faced seem to be less open to our young. And of course, we have some quite realistic fears about their safety.
I could go into detail about to deal with those things, but I’ll spare you. The salient point is that they have you to protect and inspire them, and time to get their wheels on the track. You did it; ergo, they can do it. These days, there are even more avenues by which to pursue one’s chunk of the Dream than you and I enjoyed as callow youths.
Ironically, the biggest hurdle America’s young people must surmount is the torrent of will-sapping, soul-destroying doom-talk. If you can teach them to ignore that, you’ve done your job.
There will always be work to do and choices to make. Every choice carries a cost, even if only in the opportunities one must forgo to make that choice. You can’t do it all. (I tried.) Neither can you have it all. Filet mignon or veal? Corvette or cabin cruiser? Saint-Laurent or Ralph Lauren? Sydney or Gstaad? You must choose, and forgo what was not chosen. That’s why we call economics “the dismal science,” and never mind the closet-space problems.
All that having been said, this is the American Dream. Unless you’ve been drinking rotgut out of a brown paper bag and sleeping in an alley under a blanket of old newspapers, you’re living it today. You’re a blessed participant in a historic miracle. With a little focus and discipline, your kids can have it too.
Don’t let the doom-talkers take it away from you.
