I’m really fascinated by this article. I’ve always been pretty shocked the news cycle. How so very often something that riles the public can just blow over after enough time. No resolution and nothing fixed.

I like how society at large is described in the article. It’s an ad-hoc construction. A modified version of what the USA was built on hundreds of year ago but slowly tailored by the people, the government and the corporations. The fact is that the fabric of our culture is so wide-spread, with all sorts of people whispering its name (American dream) that I don’t know if it could ever be changed significantly.

It took long enough for Global Warming to be understood as fact, but even now the handling of this potential disaster appears to be dubious. Especially when it comes down to how people see themselves in society. Breaking out of an individualistic mind-set seems impossible save for possibly another world-war. Or for global warming to become a very real thing. I imagine we could only understand each-other if we were truly forced to work together.

The United States, locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips dying empires, is a country entranced by illusions. It spends its emotional and intellectual energy on the trivial and the absurd. It is captivated by the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls crumble. This celebrity culture giddily licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is Michael Jackson, Britney Spears or John Edwards, enthralls the country … despite bank collapses, wars, mounting poverty or the criminality of its financial class.