culture tracks lead to Vegas

[rich]

and Vegas--the home of the baddies in Stephen King's The Stand. truly
the final summing up

beware of those Captain Trips

rich

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> 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. "
>