< Grin and Ignore It />

So yesterday we saw the final debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, an event in which, when asked what they planned to do to address "energy needs and climate control," both candidates chanted "independence from foreign oil" (yaaaaaaawn) and totally ignored the climate issue.

And today there's a little puff piece in the New York Times about Branson, Missouri, where white-haired retirees go by the busloads of thousands to take in wholesome country music shows. In that piece was this:

[The mayor's son is] now working at the family’s Country Jubilee Theater.... Fall is “empty-nester” season — oceans of gray hair. The audience roared when a hillbilly idiot said something dumb and was rebuked by his father: “Next thing, you’ll believe in global warming!” So go the culture wars in Branson. This is red-state central, dear to evangelicals....

Yes, wholesome country-music-listening, lapel-flag-wearing, pledge-reciting, Bible-toting America, where everyone puts in an honest day's retirement and ignores science and values the sanctity of life.

No wonder the young in America treat their elders with so much reverence and respect.
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Life at the end of the Empire

As the world's economic system implodes, there's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for everyone to say enough to the old ways, and to insist on a better way.