> What's the matter with America?
While driving last week on a long-distance journey through the US heartland, I kept flipping the radio in a vain attempt to stave off boredom. Occasionally I'd get a scratchy CBS affiliate here and there. I'd hear the usual entertainment-masquerading as news, and then a sudden, jarring sound bite: "The Pentagon reports that a major leader responsible for recent terror attacks in Baghdad was captured today..." Click. Some preacher, ranting about end times. Click. Some tinhorn military life-form yelping about Islamofascism on Fox. Click. Schmaltzy big band music from the 1950s. Click.
It was like the sonic equivalent of the hotel in "The Shining". All those endless corridors and identical rooms, opening into madness... only this wasn't the madness of the Empire's beginning. It was the madness of its end.
-- DRR