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Over at Alicublog Doghouse Riley posts a comment that I find it difficult to argue with:
I don't think my neighbors are particularly stupider than they've ever been, just as uninterested as always while the people picking their pockets have become both more sophisticated and more blatant about it. The fact that people did not descend on Washington en masse and demand the scalps of every son of a bitch banker on Wall Street was the final capitulation to digital serfdom. I think the ground floor is hedonism; when we start hitting what used to be the middle class right in the electronic consumer gizmo we'll see people wake up. And too late it will be. We're Israel. We're controlled by 17% of the population, because 34% let them get away with it. And there's no fucking way out. I don't think this is much different that what we faced in '68, or '74, or '81, or through the theft of the Dare To Be Moderate Clinton Presidency. It was tolerated for too long. Democrats shamelessly sold their birthright merely because they lost to that cocksucker Nixon; the country sold out its promise during the Carter administration, because it refused the ignominy of driving a smaller car. (For that matter, the Truman administration sold old FDR, and our karma's been deservedly awful ever since.) There was a clear opportunity to reverse what was left in '08, and there was no one there to do it. I don't know about Obama's efforts, best or otherwise, but he was not the man to do so, assuming one exists. I'm sorry, really; I don't think most Americans deserve what's happening to this culture, but then, I spent forty years urging them to do something before we reached this point. Me, I'm gonna come here for a laugh or two, and to enjoy the clientele, so long as I have electricity, and I'm gonna thank the Lord that the only children I have to apologize to are other people's.
*sigh*
I don't think my neighbors are particularly stupider than they've ever been, just as uninterested as always while the people picking their pockets have become both more sophisticated and more blatant about it. The fact that people did not descend on Washington en masse and demand the scalps of every son of a bitch banker on Wall Street was the final capitulation to digital serfdom. I think the ground floor is hedonism; when we start hitting what used to be the middle class right in the electronic consumer gizmo we'll see people wake up. And too late it will be. We're Israel. We're controlled by 17% of the population, because 34% let them get away with it. And there's no fucking way out. I don't think this is much different that what we faced in '68, or '74, or '81, or through the theft of the Dare To Be Moderate Clinton Presidency. It was tolerated for too long. Democrats shamelessly sold their birthright merely because they lost to that cocksucker Nixon; the country sold out its promise during the Carter administration, because it refused the ignominy of driving a smaller car. (For that matter, the Truman administration sold old FDR, and our karma's been deservedly awful ever since.) There was a clear opportunity to reverse what was left in '08, and there was no one there to do it. I don't know about Obama's efforts, best or otherwise, but he was not the man to do so, assuming one exists. I'm sorry, really; I don't think most Americans deserve what's happening to this culture, but then, I spent forty years urging them to do something before we reached this point. Me, I'm gonna come here for a laugh or two, and to enjoy the clientele, so long as I have electricity, and I'm gonna thank the Lord that the only children I have to apologize to are other people's.
*sigh*
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