Celebrated party-giver Elsa Maxwell got it right when she said:"Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can!"
Right about now, there's a great deal to laugh at in America. Or, more correctly, about America. While the Great Recession has joyfully generated some amazing acts of kinship and kindness, it has also triggered some laughable contradictions. As in the case of: More information side by side with less wisdom...more traffic accidents side by side with less cars....more political leadership side by side with less political challenge.
It's true, being a mix of different cultures we Americans are famous for our many contradictions. But at this writing, some contradictions are in the classic category of the ill-winds-that-blow-no-good. Consider...
Our body of knowledge is exploding exponentially each and every day. In 2006 the world produced 161 "exabytes" of digital information. That's 3 million times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written since the beginning. Next year, according to the "Columbia Journalism Review," that 161 exabytes will spike to 988. And yet with all of that information, Americans in only four states have found the wisdom to accept gay marriage.
One is left to wonder how long it will take for the historically inevitable -- filing away this absurd primal fear along with other discarded fears such as witches, black cats, and mental illness!
In a second peculiar contradiction, Detroit is projecting 6 million fewer car sales this year, and yet Americans persist in its growing number of traffic accidents. Each year, more than 100,00 incidents yielding 40,000 injuries and 1500 deaths.
You ask yourself how can we keep killing ourselves on the road faster and faster with fewer and fewer cars. Answers range from the fact that Americans are sleeping less to the hunch we simply prefer speed to safety!
The third contradiction afoot these days is more political leadership side by side with less political challenge. This, to be sure, is more opinion than truth, and yet there are some truthy examples out there to support it. On one hand we have a new president who has unveiled an ambitious array of plans and programs. On the other, we have the loyal opposition exercising their right to dissent, yet making this more comedy than drama. That's because today's dissenters-in-charge are the likes of mushy-mouthed critics like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Anne Coulter.
I'm not a card-carrying Republican, but even an Independent has to yearn for the classier days of dissent by a Wendell Wilkie, Barry Goldwater, William Buckley and Newt Gingrich. They didn't shout as loud, but they did think better!
But, hey, if you like your America in sharp shades of clanging contradictions, this is your day...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment