The Tedium Is the Message

I'm always down for a slap fight twixt opinionators (although, to be sure, with the conservatards being more robust in their epithets, Pat Buchanan would have found or created an opportunity to call, say, Jonah Goldberg a douchey inbred fuckwit or some such), but the root of the problem is hopelessly obscured. Consumerism and jonesmanship long ago supplanted the concept of an informed citizenry that votes and lives its principles. Now it is enough simply to be seen mouthing them. Hey, I watched the global warming LiveAid dealio, whaddaya want from me?

Let's put it in even more stark terms -- Reich and Judt, whatever their principled differences, probably cling to the hope that "if only people knew....", they would buy local, drive smarter, be less wasteful, blah blah blah. If only they knew how the sausage was made.

Well, guess what, podna? They may not know the arcana of capital mobility and bundled derivatives, liquidity puts and FDI and such, but they know cheap sausage when they see it, and they know they want it. You can give them all the guided tours of the slaughterhouse you want, but no one believes that they're the sausage until the bolt gun's cocked against their temple.

You might be better off just telling them to max out their credit cards on iPhones and magic beans, so at least they're enjoying themselves while their jobs are outsourced and their houses are foreclosed.