In his work “The Year of the Jackpot”, Robert A Heinlein talked about a character named Potiphar Breen who looked for cycles in everything and found matches in the strangest places. One of the things I remember most about that book was when he talked about “The Silly Season” — a time when humans started acting like lemmings, engaging in silly, irrelevant and/or self-destructive behaviors.
In the 30s, it was flagpole sitting, goldfish swallowing, etc. In the sixties, well too many weird things to count. The seventies had streaking, pet rocks and eight inch platform shoes...
The thing is, all of the above were accompanied by deep national angst and confusion, where people lost connection with society and civilization, and just plain started acting weird.
Now we have homosexual marriage, flash-mobs, teens playing “knockout” and God only knows what the next weird thing is going to be. I don’t expect it to be good though.
I’m convinced of one thing though. If there is not a Conservative victory in 2012, there will not be a United States (as it currently exists) in 2016.
The times are both depressingly and frighteningly “interesting”.
Case and point to you sir!
See “Planking”
http://www.facebook.com/OfficialPlanking
http://www.geekosystem.com/best-planking-pictures/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRHnTFesv7c
Good post - in the end a lot of this comes down to leadership, doesn’t it? If you had a *real* leader or set of leaders in place, things would likely be different. A Reagan, a Churchill, a DeGaulle, a Thatcher. I think people innately crave that sort of real leadership - which is obviously completely missing these days.