Peggy Noonan is a daft bitch. In a column from the Wall Street Journal last week, she laid out the tired argument of the two Americas. It’s been done many times before and it will be done many times again, and I really shouldn’t let it get to me, but I do. Seeing as she’s painting me and my generation as the “less American” of those two Americas, it tends to get under my skin. I’m tired of being called unpatriotic just because I believe I have the right to question my government when I feel that they are in the wrong.

In the Old America, love of country was natural. You breathed it in. You either loved it or knew you should.

In the New America, love of country is a decision. It’s one you make after weighing the pros and cons. What you breathe in is skepticism and a heightened appreciation of the global view.

How dare I! I mean, government is still filled with elected officials, right? People that we as citizens voted into office to represent us? They work for us, not the other way around, correct? So, we’re allowed to ask questions and even fire them, if we see that they are doing a shitty job. Of course we’re skeptical and why shouldn’t we appreciate a global view? These two Americas are still located on Earth, right Peggy?

Noonan goes on and on with these inane comparisons between this fictional “Old America” and this fabricated “New America.” She sounds like a highly politicized version of Grandpa Simpson, boring everyone around her to death with half-remembered stories of how hard it was and how everything was different and how everybody wore an onion on their belt, because it was the style at the time. Where Peggy lives, I assume it’s cold and there are wolves after her.

A reminder, Peggy- in this “Old America” that you so artlessly create out of whole cloth, you wouldn’t be allowed out of the kitchen, and if you were, you’d be paid markedly less than a man doing the same job while being sexually harassed in your place of work.

People like Peggy hold their pristine remembrances of an “Old America” in such high regard, building up the boom-ish years in post-WWII America to be something that they never were. It’s not even a case of rose-colored glasses so much as it’s a case of equating Andy Griffith and June Cleaver with real Joe and Jane America, circa 1950. They remind me of the time my mother showed me a black and white photo of her as a child. I must’ve been about seven or eight and after staring in awe at the picture for a few seconds, I asked her, “What was it like to live in black and white?” “No honey,” she replied, “I wasn’t black and white, that’s just the camera. Everything was in color, just like it is now.”

Everything is in color, just like it is now. Hear that, Peggy? Is that clear enough for you? Apparently not:

A New America answer: He didn’t become a rich lawyer like everyone else—and that was a sacrifice! Old America: Five years in a cage—that’s a sacrifice!

In the Old America, high value was put on education, but character trumped it. That’s how Lincoln got elected: Honest Abe had no formal schooling. In Mr. McCain’s world, a Harvard Ph.D. is a very good thing, but it won’t help you endure five years in Vietnam. It may be a comfort or an inspiration, but it won’t see you through. Only character, and faith, can do that. And they are very Old America.

Old America: candidates for office wear ties. New America: Not if they’re women. Old America: There’s a place for formality, even the Beatles wore jackets!

I guess that puts a new twist on an old adage about war; there are no Harvard Ph.D’s in a foxhole.

Why don’t you just come out and say what you really want to say, Peggy? Just say that you think Barack Obama is a traitorous sissy who hates America and couldn’t hold John McCain’s jock if he had a shovel. Just say it already instead of beating around the bush!

If there’s one thing I hate more than right-wing smears of Obama’s character (or any candidate, for that matter) it’s their inability to own up to their true feelings. They try to get cute with their wording and parsing of statements, like we don’t all see what it is they really want to say. Have the temerity to just say it! People still won’t like it, but at least they might stop calling you weasels and snakes because of your constant gilding of the lilly.

She closes with a bit of a conceit, followed by a final jab:

Maybe if you are 25 years old, your sense of the Old and New is different. In the Old America they were not enlightened about race and sex; they accepted grim factory lines and couldn’t even begin to imagine the Internet. Fair enough. But I suspect the political playing out of a long-ongoing cultural and societal shift is part of the dynamic this year.

I suppose that her idea of this “cultural and societal shift” is the replacing of Baby Boomers with the Gen Xers and those slightly older. Of course, being closer to the 25 year old marker she places, I don’t see this as a bad thing. I also understand why people her age think that it is. But what she seems to fail to understand is that it’s an inevitable thing. As Baby Boomers edge toward retirement, they’re starting to look back on the sepia-toned memories that they think they have, forgetting that every period in human existence is filled with shades of grey, no matter how much we try to deny it.

Peggy, I want to believe that you’re not so stupid to swallow all of this stunning bullshit you’re laying out in front of us, even if I do believe that you think we’re dumb enough to scoop it up and ask for more. Stop it.