I could not even get a quarter way through the Naomi Wolf clip …it was just a little contrived and frankly boring. Was there actually an a real audience there? To compare contemporary US society with Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Mussolini’s Italy seems to be stretching reality a little, but no doubt makes for an interesting book. The US economy is starting to flounder, but that’s in the order of economic cycles. Some terrorists took a swipe at the US, and the wrong man was in charge at the time. Health care is in crisis, but it is in every modern society. US self confidence is at an all time low, and that’s when doom and gloom merchants start to cash in.
Prohibition, the Great Depression, world wars, oppression, dictators, famine, no freedom of speech, no freedom of movement, police states, no elections, and the list goes on, are things most Americans have no experience of, and I see no evidence of it in any serious measure.
My only criticism of US society is that not enough people keep themselves informed about things going on around them. I was appalled when a Stanford graduate told me recently he did not know who Bhutto was. There needs to be far more newspapers, balanced documentaries, and debates. That will peg thinking to reality and deter too many flights of fancy into cukoo land. The checks and balances are as much about the media as anything else, and the more prevalent it is, the more accountability becomes a mainstay.
