culture tracks lead to Vegas

[Joseph Tracy]

Here's a few lines from Jim Kunstlers blog . Jim was one of the  
clearest predictors of the 08 economic meltdown, he can be a  
smartass, but does some interesting thinking and writing.

"Moron culture in the USA really got full traction after the Second  
World War. Our victory over the other industrial powers in that  
struggle was so total and stupendous that the laboring orders here  
were raised up to economic levels unknown by any peasantry in human  
history. People who had been virtual serfs trailing cotton sacks in  
the sunstroke belt a generation back were suddenly living better than  
Renaissance dukes, laved in air-conditioning, banqueting on "TV  
dinners," motoring on a whim to places that would have taken a three- 
day mule trek in their grandaddy's day.  Soon, they were buying Buick  
dealerships and fried chicken franchises and opening banks and  
building leisure kingdoms of thrill rides and football.  It's hard to  
overstate the fantastic wealth that a not-very-bright cohort of human  
beings was able to accumulate in post-war America.
       And they were able to express themselves - as the great  
chronicler of these things, Tom Wolfe, has described so often and  
well - in exuberant "taste cultures" of material life, of which Las  
Vegas is probably the final summing-up, and every highway strip, of  
twenty-thousand strips from Maine to Oregon, is the democratic  
example. "