Family PicnicWe live in a strange time in American public life. Many of the truths we have held as immutable are revealing themselves to be aspects of a special and transient post-war world that is rapidly becoming untenable. From our identical homes on quarter-acre lots thirty miles away from work to our massive military forces securing the raw materials necessary to preserve this mausoleum civilization, from the escalating costs of education and health care to our steadily mounting debt financed by economic and strategic rivals, the post-war order is fraying badly and will fail completely more sooner than later.

And this isn’t all that weird. All civilizations face these moments. What is odd is that those who do think strategically and historically about the country we live in are treated as dreamers, starry-eyed fanatics not fit for adult company. Those who pretend that Levittown can be built heedlessly into the sea and the great beyond are treated as the serious, rational players in public life.

From our industrial food culture making us sick to our SUVs running out of fuel and road and our mounting debts, we are reaching the point of crisis. A functional society would wake up and accept the truth about our future. But people who have told some uncomfortable truths about our way of life are dismissed as cranks. Admitting to any areas of agreement with Michael Pollan, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, or Ron Paul will exile you to the kids’ table. Visionary engineers like Fuller, Telsa or Ovshinsky found their patents bought by corporations who bury them and are remembered, if at all, as nutcases and mad scientists.

We believe things in this country that are virtually unique in the developed world. The idea that evolution is controversial is a national embarrassment. The belief in the selfless exceptionality of America on the world stage requires a carefully honed ignorance of our history that defies credulity. The national fear of change borders on paranoia. We demand to be treated as the big brothers of the world, wise and strong. But our national discourse is the rhetorical equivalent of a toddler with her ears plugged droning “la,la, la.”

If heedlessness is the test of gravitas we are in serious trouble.