Living in the Asylum...

...it's hard to understand that everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - from elsewhere thinks of U.S. Americans as socio-political-economic morons.

Seriously. They do. Fact.

U.S. film distributors are right to fear a Conservative Christian backlash in this case. And that is very sad. Conservative hooliganism of every stripe seems to rule the day.

We operate on the basis of some of the most dumb-ass, fucked up, political ideology ever conceived. People on the right need to stop dreaming about Capitalist-Libertarian-Conservative Christian pie in the sky. It ain't gonna happen. Not while the corporatist can skim off the top of a culture that serves them so well. And no, you aren't going to win the lottery nor become wealthy enough to join their ranks. The existing class hierarchy is incredibly rigid and people rarely move from one class to one higher up on the ladder. If anything, and given the current economic climate, there are plenty of people on their way down that ladder - so make way.

If there was an industry in which the U.S. might still - maybe - see itself as a leader it would be in the sciences and technology. But given the tactics of the radical-right I should think that there might be a dumbing down of the next American generation in the offing. Do you suppose that the folks at Genentech are Creationists? Do you imagine that we shall find cures for humanity's many ills by merely praying for them?

We were screwed the minute Europeans sent Puritans and Quakers packing to the New World. This nation is the political offspring of a people possessed of a very narrow world-view.