Melmoth and Ahab Meet Uncle Sam In A Bar...

The U.S. resembles some overladen, aging, polar explorer of the 20th century, pulling a sleigh grotesquely overloaded with baubles, doomed to collapse and die on a desperate journey to reach 'the Pole'- and all for naught, as we already know where the Pole is, we know it is of no strategic value, and we know that a picture or account of the Pole will reveal a desolate wasteland of ice and snow, indistinguishable from a thousand such views in the general vicinity.

So we continue to plan for a bleak 'recovery' of yet more misery, continued unemployment, and poor health as we continue to drag our sleigh, laden with our much-ballyhooed 'lifestyle' of cars and large houses, in the wrong direction, away from the principles of justice, charity, and reverence, towards the great delusions of power, glory, and omnipotence. As with Hitler, seeing America assume its rightful place in the hierarchy of nations (a place much smaller than we had imagined it to be) has driven us mad, and we rage about our superweapons which will allow us to keep ruling them.

And we applaud an increase in home building and build more roads with 'stimulus funding'- the very activities that got us into these problems. We're going the wrong way and the companies that profit from us are spending hundreds of millions to ensure we don't change direction. If you were to put baboons in charge of flying a 747, in mid-air, the baboons would not be afraid, and our rightwing mobs are no more afraid than those baboons.

In a word, this sucker is going down. If you close your eyes and scream, you'll miss the majesty of the moment.