August 2019

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and on-one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agenda or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.