The Roman emperors used circuses.
The reason why we are in the fix we are in is because the public went wild over a new celebrity, and voted him into office.
Potent.
The same things are true in the political arena. America ain’t going to be saved by the “names.” If it will be saved, it will be by a whole bunch of principled and courageous folks no one ever heard of before.
God bless Ken Connor.
The first step towards saving the republic:
Shut off the television.
Better yet, take a sledge hammer to it.
” spirits become more vacant, more disordered, and more obsessed with titillating drivel”
Yup.
The final line of the article is the best. The answer is clearly no. Plan accordingly.
Not to be the bearer of the ugly truth, but the country is exhibiting every symptom of a powerful, late stage democracy. Are there segments of society that are not in terminal decay? Sure.(But many of them are in denial).
On the whole, the body of society is devolving rapidly. No one understand this better than Obama; hence his ability to control the situation. His read on our vulnerability is his key to success. Our inability to really accept what is happening is our key weakness.
Obama's 'change' is to overthrow the old order, which he can see is more illusion than reality these days, in favor of a new, better society. He may not be able to bring it all down, and his new society will fail as hard as any utopia has yet.
His legacy, at the very least, will be as the leader who showed the America people that they had given up on freedom, individualism and faith in themselves as our animating spirit, in exchange for security, safety and obedience to the state.
We as Conservatives have lost the American culture. Celebrity worship in America baffles me. Every week at the grocery I see some other people on magazine covers with apparently first names only.
“Have we become so shallow, so superficial, SO celebrity-obsessed that Michael Jackson’s death is more upsetting, more real to us, than images of democratic protesters bleeding in the streets—that participating in the shameful exploitation of Jon and Kate Gosselin’s crumbling marriage on TLC is more important than watching congressional debates about the future of our health care system on C-SPAN?”
Well, duh. Lemme expand on that right after America’s Got Talent is over.
State run TV also presents a problem, especially when there is a joint investment between the media and the political party that controls the U.S. government.
And people wonder why conservatives abhor popular culture.
Turn off the television. We cut our satellite feed a long time ago (2002, maybe?) and only watch a DVD every now and then. The Net, radio and newspapers work fine for news.
Turn the televisions off, and you’ll see from healthier and more realistic perspectives.
I have no argument with the basic premise of this article as referenced by the elevation of Zero to the highest office in the land, but the lopsided allocation of media attention and public focus is more an ominous indicator of how shallow and superficial our news media has become.
An athlete, a musician/pedophile, a politician, and a criminal.
Nothing about the effects of cap and trade, Iranian revolutions, that California and other states are issuing IOUs because the politicians have so botched up running the states, nothing.
Rush is right. We're living in the United States of Entertainment.