Joe Bageant: 'The beauty of the system'

A tale of shipping, blackmail and slow death in the lost Cul de Sac

Joe Bageant

America is a dark half continent of grotesque notions made manifest, such as
Scientology, the GOP and the MacDonald's "Big Bowl" meal. Americans seem to
possess psychic flypaper that attracts strange unsavory notions. Worse yet,
we act upon them.

One notion we got into our heads right after World War II was that each
generation must live better than the previous one. Not such a bad idea at
the time, considering the number of folks in the previous...