This comes from an article on Alternet.org titled "Are you ready for the energy crash?"
It's from James Howard Kunstler, author of "The Long Emergency", a work about the Peak Oil problem. Check it:
Kunstler's rage and disdain was righteous and unsparing. He was pissed and he was eloquent: "We've turned into this nation of overfed clowns, riding around in clown cars, eating clown food, watching clown shows," he said. We're "a nation of cringing, craven fuckups."
Kunstler singled out one element of the psychological dimension in American life: "The idea that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. It's not a good thing for adults to wish upon a star. Right now, this is a normative belief - that you can wish for things, and you'll get them."
He said that the nation's leading religion has become the "worship of unearned riches, which is based on a very stark idea, the idea that you can get something for nothing."
If that was the religion, Kunstler said, then the city of Las Vegas is its temple. Why this matters, he argued, is that when we talk about the problems facing our oil-dependent society, the dominant frame of mind is one of pure fantasy - that years of predominance on the international stage has left America smug in the belief that it need only wish to have its problems solved, and that it doesn't have to face challenges that might require a massive change in all aspects of American life.
