Reply #35: Unfortunately, some nightmares do not automatically end. [View All]

[Voltaire99]

Yeah, I feel as you do. But there is every evidence of this moment being the way things shall stay for years. Discourse has no savior on the horizon. And the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aren't the only wars: the kulturkampf going on since the late 20th century is its own deeper, more persistent front.

There's little hope as long as the Democratic Party, the media, and the entertainment industry are led by corporate-friendly shills who don't want to rock the boat--destroying reform candidates, and stifling reform-minded art and media (see Michael Moore's current problems).

Politically, Democratic Party-style centrism is doomed to playing consort to conservative fanaticism, blunting the edges and softening the rhetoric unless and until some new cultural force arises in opposition.

Look, as always, to youth culture. A draft may be just the thing to bring the Bush era to an end. Then again, more darkly, it may not: maybe the ranks of Bush and Tillman worship will first produce a new Hitler youth.

But one thing gives me hope. Ironically, it's hedonism. Americans love their leisure and their comforts too much to be ideal subjects of fascism. Democracy may be dead; easy living is not!