Is concern justified?

I have had several friends mention to me that my posts have taken a notably pessimistic tone in the past couple of years.  Whereas I have been known by some in the past as a "malignant optimist", I seem now to be perennially pessimistic.  Is this really warranted, or am I just getting crotchety in my old age?

Well, all I can say in reply is that it seems to me our nation is in greater danger now than at any time in my life, including even the Cold War years when we lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation. I truly fear for the quality of life, and even the very livelihood, of my children and grandchildren over the coming decades.  As I pointed out in yesterday's posts, the fiscal and unemployment issues that consume our focus these days are, in fact, fairly trivial compared to the much larger and more difficult-to-address structural issues the nation faces.

And it seems to me that neither the public at large nor our leadership, political or intellectual, are facing up to the magnitude of our problems or doing much of anything effective to even begin to explore possible responses. There are a few voices here and there, like Fareed Zakaria's CNN series "Restoring the American Dream", that are trying to raise public awareness about the looming issues, but there is remarkably little real public discussion about these problems.  The right is consumed with it's ideological and religious purity and the left is locked in a failed liberal social model from the last century. If there was ever a time for a new voice, a new political philosophy, and new cultural norms adapted to today's changed world, it is now.  But where are they?

It's not so much that we as a nation are in deep trouble that makes me pessimistic. It is that we as a nation seem to be largely unaware we are in such deep trouble, and unwilling to face up to the difficult choices we need to make and the difficult sacrifices that will be required and the hard work those sacrifices will entail.  We as a nation seem to be prepared to continue shopping at the mall with our iPod earbuds in our ears even as the tsunami approaches!  That is what really drives my pessimism.