Chris Hedges thinks so. Here's a column by him in which he argues for Melville's celebrated novel as a metaphor for the self-destructive nature, then and now. This column is not cheery reading; Hedges is a writer of formidable talent, and the case he makes here is a convincing one.
But even if his case is accurate, and America is now on the verge of destruction just as Ahab and his crew were before the final assault on the White Whale, I prefer to think of the small crumb of hope that Melville throws his readers at the end--Ishmael's survival, and his tell of the tale as perhaps a warning to the rest of us that, to borrow from Tennyson, it is not too late to seek a better world. Or, at least a better course.
If we are indeed the crew of the Pequod, may we find the moral courage to mutiny, so that his warning is not in vain, and our future is not forfeit.
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