The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

Over the weekend at the West Point graduation ceremony, President Bush spoke of the "dark threat" facing our nation -- meaning foreign terrorists who want to kick our ass for one reason or another. What troubles me at least as much as the legitimate fear of bombings, bio-terror, and suchlike by peevish foreigners is the dark threat of our own insane current national lifestyle apropos of the difficult project of remaining civilized in the United States.

Circumstances took me recently to the asteroid belt of big box commerce two miles outside my town and, as always, I was shocked to rediscover what passes for normality these days. What you get in these environments is a human habitat so devoid of meaning, grace, and spiritual reward that it would be impossible for its denizens to form any coherent idea of a life worth living. Indeed, this is the dark threat that disturbs my dreams -- that a nation of TV Zombies lost in the narcotic raptures of infotainment and compulsive shopping will drift over the tipping point of diminished returns into an abyss of internal political disorder, economic strife, cruelty, hatred, scapegoating, and eventually bloodshed. Evil foreigners are not even necessary to bring this about.

For instance, where did Americans really spend Memorial Day weekend? In their cars. Because that's all our national life is about these days. The suburban wastelands where most Americans live have no civic environments worth being in. Even if we weren't facing the imminent prospect of chronic oil market disruptions (and eventual resource scarcity -- despite the quack stories you might have heard about the earth's mantle being soaked with oil), why would Americans want to continue living this way?

The answer is that we've simply sleepwalked into a cul-de-sac of bad choices, laziness, complacency, and habit that will be very difficult to get out of when events happen to wake us up. We are our own dark threat.