Nobody's even mad as hell...

I hate to tell you this, but America has gone nuts and nobody really seems to care. Think about it. We had a booming economy and we made all kinds of wonderful and admired things, and we just shipped it all overseas where we can receive neither profit or respect. Nobody's complaining very loudly. We used to have a two-party political system with rational idealists on both sides. Now we have three parties if you count the crazy teabaggers. We still have the idealists, but now all sides are deranged. Nobody seems to mind very much. We used to have phones in our homes that never, ever needed repair and rarely needed replacement. But we gave them up for the cheap disposable phones they make overseas, many remote handsets that require $15.00 batteries every few months. We once had free TV, but we gave it up for the privilege of paying for everything we watch, being excluded from what we can't afford, and instead of having the promised fewer commercials we have many, many more. We used to go to the movies for an economy night out. Now movie tickets cost a lot, but not nearly as much as the concession stand popcorn and candy we once could afford. We used to have nightly news that was actual world news so we knew what was happening in our troubled planet. Now we get the late-breaking reports on Hollywood troubled divorces and the latest details over every celebrity in court or rehab. Back then we had settled the religion issue. Freedom of religion. Worship whom you like. No argument. Now we are constantly aware of religious zealots, mostly Christian evangelicals,who want to change the Constitution, govern every woman's birth decision, and—if they could—annhilate anyone enjoying unapproved sex. Once we were interested in films about real people, films that were praised because they had interested, well-written stories. Now,with few exceptions, we're more interested in serial killers, anti-heroes and aliens and our only standard for success is box office. Today we have no anthology dramas. Most of our TV fare are reality shows, quiz shows aimed at the education level of of 12-year-olds and sitcoms whose humor is almost exclusively based on sex, the toilet, and putting down one's supposed friends. Drama shows on the other hand are rife with cancer, violence, opening bodies and more serial killers than probably exist in the real world. We had variety shows featuring the country's leading dancers, musicians, opera singers, even acrobats and comics. Today the only variety shows are overproduced award shows; the only music is country or rock and roll. Of course if you want some culture, there's always NPR, but the Republicans, seeing culture as evil, want to do away with public radio and TV. Society has never been worse. All right, there were lots of things wrong back then. But we weren't wrong. Because we were moving forward, economically, socially, politically and every other -ly. But at some point, we threw up our hands, started distrusting our neighbors, clung to our various religions and started believing every single thing we were told by the increasingly impotent news channels, especially that that wealth and fame is more important than anything. So now we live in a society that's more divisive, more expensive, more agumentative, more insular, and more shallow while being less cultured, less educated, less communicative, less prosperous and less civil. And if Howard Bealle asked us to go to our windows and shout, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more," we'd probably say, "I'm not mad about anything," and "Take what any more?"