It does come down to that, doesn't it.
No guts, no historical perspective - no Aims: except personal and Corporate cupidity. No 'Gods' either - only the $$ and that lip-service on Sundays - mainly preying: "Dear Father: Please Let Us Win, Like Always." (But if 'We" can't - then Let Me Win, OK?)
Because the illiteracy is matched by innumeracy: your "3000" comparison would be doomed to incomprehension. The massive overreaction fits the overall pattern of dumbth. No?
What % of the US population could calculate the "percentage" which 3K might be: of 280,000,000 - and get the decimal point within an order of magnitude? OK - TWO orders of magnitude? (What % would know what "an order of magnitude" is?) Are we already Kornbluth's Marching Morons - it seems we're a nuke's-throw away from complete disconnect with humankind. Contrast 'US' with the Brits in the Underground stations during the Blitz. bin-L appears to know our national character to a T.
Amazing the mind's access to everything ever seen, read, experienced - all 'plots' - real and imagined. Beats the shit outta digital- funnel- bubble- or Bubba- 'sorts'! My re-collection tells me:
The US vox populi is seen now by all: to have abandoned even the usual pretense (for display) of all that civics stuff and especially - all that Principle stuff. Has just sat mute, masturbating on consumption (and obsessed only with "raising That back up, higher") - while barely noticing, as a tiny bunch of Neoconmen reversed as much civilization as took 200 yrs. for us to lurch towards (all the while finding it Rilly Hard to kick the formal-slavery habit: now we do it by proxy and digital banking.)
We managed all this in a bit over 900 days!
We are now operating from a very old agenda; one quite familiar to me from my Gramma's time, and from a mindset indistinguishable from her xenophobic hatred, jingoistic Know-nothingism - and the ever-present sanctimony of the religio-bigot. And it's hanging out there as never before, for all to see. I think they have seen, were there any doubts about "whether or not we've Really gone Loony".
The evidence is now indelible: of what Murica is capable of, and of how casually our disinterested consumers, most non-voting - will let Loonies run amok with the power of all those $$ skimmed from across the planet, especially since WW-II. Shrub has officially ordered the New Nukes (with expected minimal mention in the Corp meeja, then or since. I know - I regularly look for refs. It's a dead 'issue' - despite the truly ominous implications to anyone with a third of a working brain.)
Some of this may be reversible, depending on the dice throw of next few months. Decades to atone for the rest? but nobody will ever forget our pewling panic and the massive hypocrisy - even at home. I doubt anyone will have failed to notice too, that the Americans they may have met travelling, in the past: are not running the place. They now have an idea who Is. (Even if many of us haven't noticed even that - yet.)
Maybe we'll squeak through, house-clean in the nick of time? Crap shoot.
Condolences,
Ashton
