By now those who don’t know about Phil Robertson and the debacle at A & E are most likely among those who have no access to any kind of media. They have no idea what the world is doing, because they have no way of knowing what to pay attention to. [More ... ]
This article of 10 Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America was written back in 2012, but it is still highly relevant. Here are the headings: 1. Few People Are Impressed By Us 2. Few People Hate Us 3. We Know Nothing About The Rest Of The World 4. We Are Poor At Expressing Gratitude And Affection 5. The Quality of Life For The Average American Is Not That Great 6. The Rest Of The World Is Not A Slum-Ridden Shithole Compared To Us 7. We’re Paranoid 8. We’re Status-Obsessed And Seek Attention 9. We Are Very Unhealthy 10. We Mistake Comfort For Happiness
Continuing the many ways in which the Surveiller-in-Chief is resembling George W. Bush, Obama is now pushing for military action in Syria, using the retread justification of Weapons of Mass Destruction (gasp!). [More]
Recurring haunting thought: A formal democracy is not at all inconsistent with a country trending toward dictatorship. Given our bizarre national priorities (I'm referring to the various planet-destroying and hyper-xenophobic policies where the aims of the two major parties INTERSECT), one could meaningfully advocate today for a revolution by which the control of the United States government should be handed to the People. I can imagine people scoffing at this idea: "Isn't that what we already HAVE?" Sure. On the books, that's what we have. How much things have changed in the U.S. that so many high-placed prominent government officials publicly construe common folks who want to be well-informed about government misconduct to be dangerous enemies. How far we've come, that a former President declares that "America has no functioning democracy at this moment." How far we've come that it's so difficult to get so many people to wrest themselves from their TV and sports obsessions in order that they can regain focus enough to see the danger of our policies divesting regular folks of any meaningful political power. If this seems like hyperbole, check out "Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America" by John Nichols and Robert McChesney.
Excellent work by Stephen Colbert: