Word: agee
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...sure, whatever - Americans can now revert to their ruthlessly pragmatic, commonsensical selves. Admitting that we aren't certain exactly how to proceed is liberating, and key. Hyperbolic rants and rigid talking points, in either Limbaughian or Olbermannian flavors, now seem worse than useless, artifacts of a bumptious barroom age...
...reason for Obama's election and high approval ratings is his privileging of the empirical and pragmatic ahead of ideological reflex. We have not, of course, arrived in a golden age of fair-minded, intellectually honest postpartisanship, as proved by the congressional votes on the stimulus package and the redoubled ferocity of brain-dead partisans. But a majority of Americans out in America are dialing back or turning off their ideological autopilots, thanks to the economic crises, Obama's approach and the post-Cold War realities. With the Soviet Union gone and China socialist in name only, the specter...
...baby boomers were historically fortunate: they missed the Great Depression and World War II, and though they grew up with the hideous ambient hum of potential nuclear Armageddon, until they reached middle age, the only great national trauma was the one - the '60s and Vietnam - in which they were the self-regarding stars. The so-called millennials, on the other hand, have come of age during a period defined by the digital revolution, 9/11, financial bubbles bursting, a possible depression and the election - possibly their election - of an African-American President: the makings, frankly, of a healthier, more useful generational...
...surely will have to adjust the ways we think of ourselves. Still an exceptional country, absolutely, but not a magical one exempt from the laws of economic and geopolitical gravity. A nation with plenty of mojo left, sure, but in our 3rd century, informed by the wisdom of middle age a little more than the pedal-to-the-metal madness of youth...
Although certain self-parodying epiphenomena of the Age of Profligacy - so long, Paris Hilton! - are about to disappear, fun will endure. Hollywood is doing fantastic box-office business, thanks to insanely unserious movies like Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Madea Goes to Jail. The Colbert Report has been a special haven of sanity amid the sky-is-falling hysteria. And again, history is encouraging in this regard: Saturday Night Live and modern comedy were born during the malaise-y '70s, just as wit and humor - the New Yorker, the Marx Brothers, screwball comedy - flourished in the '30s. I'm even...