For as long as I can remember, harbingers of doom, naysayers, outcasts at life’s rich feast, and garden-variety curmudgeons have been saying that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Or words to that effect. Politicians and religious leaders are particularly fond of this admonition. According to them, the world is going to hell in a handbasket today, it went to hell in a handbasket yesterday, and it will almost certainly go to hell in a handbasket tomorrow. As long as there is a world, there will always be a handbasket for it to go to hell in.
For such is the human condition.
Keeping track of global cataclysms has been a habit of mine since high school, when I wrote my honors thesis, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Friend or Foe?” According to my detailed records, over the course of my own lifetime, the world first began to go to hell in a handbasket when the threat of nuclear war loomed over us all in the fifties. It continued to go to hell in a handbasket during the Cuban missile crisis, and when the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were assassinated. In those dark times, it was really going to hell in a handbasket. Things got so bad that it looked like the world may have been going to hell in several handbaskets simultaneously. Things were that far out of control.
The world—or at least parts of it—continued to go to hell in a handbasket as I grew to manhood. It was going to hell in a handbasket during the Vietnam war, the Days of Rage, Watergate, the dire, dreary, just plain dreadful Jimmy Carter years, Iran-contra, the Gulf war, the Iraq war, 9/11, and, most recently, the Great Recession. The world sometimes goes to hell in a handbasket several times in the same decade. For these are times that try the hearts of men.
Recently, going back over my notes, I realized that the hell-in-a-handbasket theory was ever so slightly flawed. Although the world appeared to be going to hell in a handbasket in the sixties and seventies and eighties, and as recently as 2008 when the global economy imploded, it did not go in the end to hell in a handbasket—or in any other kind of basket. It only looked like it was going to hell in a handbasket. But then cooler heads prevailed, and the world dodged a bullet. And a handbasket.
Purists will argue that the reason the world did not go to hell in a handbasket was because our leaders recognized that Armageddon was nigh and took appropriate measures to avert disaster. This is what happened in the 1940s when the civilized nations of the world, plus the Soviet Union, joined forces to wipe out the Nazis and extinguish the Empire of the Sun. I think that there is something to be said for this theory: The world was going to hell in a handbasket, people saw that the handbasket was based in Berlin and Tokyo, and sensible steps were taken to avert disaster. But it does not alter the fact that in none of the above instances, stretching all the way back to the mid-’50s, did the world ultimately go to hell in a handbasket. It may have looked like it was going to hell in a handbasket, but it never actually arrived in hell. Those who warned us that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, whatever their reasons for doing so, were crying wolf.
The hell-in-a-handbasket theory ties in directly with politicians’ oft-heard vow that, if elected, they will make America great again. This implies that there was a moment when America ceased to be great. When was this? When did America stop being envied? When did America stop being the place everyone else wanted to move to? When did America stop being the greatest nation the world has ever known? If there was a moment in my lifetime when America stopped being great, I must have been out of the room. Troubled, yes. Imperiled, yes. Confused, yes. But less than great? Don’t remember that one.
Obviously, there are times when America is greater than at other times. It was greater under Lincoln than it was under Grant; it was greater under FDR than it was under Hoover. But not for one moment since its inception has America ever ceased to be great. It’s like saying, “I want to make the Beatles great again. I want to restore the Frank Sinatra catalogue to its former greatness. If elected, I promise to make Paris a great city again.” Promising to restore America to its former greatness is like promising to restore motherhood to its former greatness. Motherhood never stopped being great. Everyone knows that.
In the end, this leads us back to the dubious theory that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. This is simply not true. Greece may be going to hell in a handbasket. Syria may be going to hell in a handbasket. Iraq, Darfur, Egypt, and maybe even Russia look like they are going to hell in a handbasket. In other words, parts of the world may be going to hell in a handbasket. But the rest of the world is doing just fine.
You can look it up.
Joe Queenan is the author, most recently, of One for the Books.
