Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Sunday, March 07, 2010

No Escape

The flabbergastingly huge openings for Avatar and now Alice in Wonderland should be taken as the second and third episodes in a trilogy that for far too many Americans seemed to begin on the night Obama was elected President. Americans seem sensible enough to want desperately to escape from the corporatized militarized superficialized catastrophized bed they so pointlessly and serially wet in the long years from the smiley-faced ad-man ax-man Reagan to the smiley-faced neoliberal sellout and smooth operator Clinton to the smiley-faced Killer Clowns of W's dumbass debacle, but I really fear we don't seem particularly willing enough or patient enough or capable enough to do the work actually to change the sheets. I do still think Obama is pragmatic and progressive enough to partner in such work, I do still think that his election was and remains a resource for hope in a diverse secular America of potential peers, indeed I still think him the most pragmatic most progressive President since FDR, but in the context of a dysfunctional Congress and a corporate-mediascape and a military-industrial complex and a disorganized populace -- but my hope is fading. If Americans are not up to the challenge of our moment we shouldn't expect the planet of which we are a part to sit idly by while we eat the world for lack of the sense to save it from ourselves -- the world will put us in our place, and the place we find ourselves in, believe me, won't be Pandora or Wonderland. (And, no, regular readers, it certainly won't be Libertopia or "The Future," either.)

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