> <http://www.gallup.com/poll/121403/Special-Report-Ideologically-Moving.as
> px>
>
> July 6, 2009
> Special Report: Ideologically, Where Is the U.S. Moving?
> Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say their views have grown more conservative
Not surprising in the least. It's not just the usual conservatism generated by economic hard times, which demoralizes and demobilizes people. The less the Empire has anything like a future, the more a significant chunk (though not the majority) of its citizens cling to fantasms of past glory.
This regression is most visible in the blockbuster Hollywood machine: "Batman: Dark Knight" is rife with the most venomous ressentiment, ranging from the defense of extraordinary rendition to the acclamation of detainee torture Terror War surveillance, in ways no Hollywood movie of the 1970s or 1980s would think to depict. The one moment of truth in that film was the scene when the hapless Hong Kong accountant was immolated on top of a vast pile of hard currency. This is pure Imperial wish-fulfillment: the fantasy that the semi-peripheries will destroy themselves, along with their vast forex reserves.
-- DRR