At least that's my sense. That in some fundamental way, during the past year the world - at least our world, by which I mean the United States - has changed. It's not so much that the United States changed overnight. It did not. It crept up on us, as each year corporate influence increased, our industrial base declined, our authoritarian tendencies grew. In the last year, the extent of the damage has been revealed, snapping into focus. Showing those of us who would look that the world has changed.

Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here.
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Several years ago, in the pages of my first blog, ddjangoWIrE, I wrote an essay with the same title. When Blogger "accidentally" deleted my account, relegated ddjangoWIrE to a stripped archive, and "lost" some of my posts, the piece converted to disconnected bits in cyberspace and the essay was gone.

I'm really not going to use that disappearance as the primary excuse to post another brief essay on the same subject. Given the state of our nation, our democracy, and the inattention, malaise, and downright selfishness of its people, there are quite enough reasons to revisit this territory.

Just Because It's An Old Idea Doesn't Mean It's A Bad Idea One of the characteristics of the illness I call "americanism" is the tendency to pay attention to style and hype rather than truth.