On Mar 5, 2007, at 3:02 PM, James Heartfield wrote:
> I was going to say, "poor you!" but then I remembered that you live
> in the
> wealthiest society on earth. And the last time that I visited, I
> seem to
> remember that it was very pleasant indeed, not least for the excellent
> company.
And the same for you - excellent company indeed.
I'm the last guy to deny material progress and pleasures. But really, James, you should spend more time here before passing a judgment like this. There's a lot of anxiety in this society, stoked at every level. Some of these fears are rational - fear of job loss, fear of catastrophic illness. Some are nuts - fear of Mexican immigrants. Some are in between the rational and the nutty. Take a stroll down Wall Street sometime, as I do every week on my way to do my radio show. The place is an armed camp. Bomb barriers, armed cops, rent-a- cops in private military uniforms. Turn on Fox News and you'll see every minute or two on the news crawl that the level of the Terror Alert is "Elevated." There's got to be some reason we pop millions of antidepressants and sleep aids every day. And, as every Marxist knows, all that wealth (and don't forget that there's a lot of poverty here for a rich country) comes at some human cost.
Doug