Word: ipod
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...pasta sauce, running shoes, yoga programs. It depends on you to like zesty Italian and me to like chipotle ranch and someone else to like low-sodium raspberry honey mustard. Through niche media, niche foods and niche hobbies, we fashion niche lives. We are the America of the iPod ads--stark, black silhouettes tethered by our brilliant white earbuds, rocking out passionately and alone. You make your choices, and I make mine. Yours, of course, are wrong. But what do I care...
That blissful isolation has to break down eventually, though. The problem is, American politics are un-American. At least, they no longer fit the a la carte ethos of iPod America. You and I can't each have our own President. We can't have our own Supreme Court or our own assault-weapons law. If you don't like the USA Patriot Act, you can't delete it from your digital playlist...
...winners less generous in victory. What is it, after all, that most aggravates Democrats about President Bush? That he campaigned as a centrist but led from the right; he lost the popular vote but governed as though he had won in a landslide. And why shouldn't he? In iPod America, every citizen--bolstered by his self-created echo chamber--is a landslide victor in his own head...
...winners less generous in victory. What is it, after all, that most aggravates Democrats about President Bush? That he campaigned as a centrist but led from the right; he lost the popular vote but governed as though he had won in a landslide. And why shouldn't he? In iPod America, every citizen - bolstered by his self-created echo chamber - is a landslide victor in his own head...
...That blissful isolation has to break down eventually, though. The problem is, American politics are un-American. At least, they no longer fit the a la carte ethos of iPod America. You and I can't each have our own President. We can't have our own Supreme Court or our own assault-weapons law. If you don't like the USA Patriot Act, you can't delete it from your digital playlist...