[ExI] it's better than it used to be

[Olga Bourlin]

2011/4/26 spike <spike66 at att.net>:

> Sure some things didn’t work out for us, but look what we did get that no one really anticipated, even AC Clarke.  Right, we don’t have flying cars like the Jetsons.  Road travel is remarkably similar to how it was in my own childhood.  But look what we did get: a new technology for getting information into the home which is so good and so effective, many of us don’t want to go chasing off somewhere else, even if we could fly out of our own driveway.  I wouldn’t give up my internet for flying cars, given the choice of a trade straight across.  Think about that.  The future is better than it used to be.

Absolutely some things are better,  But there's also this: “More and
more Americans are desperately trying to hold on.  In an astonishing
reversal of the first 200 years of American history when we were seen
as perhaps the most optimistic of all peoples, we have become one of
the most personally insecure."

This article does not take into account a good deal of unsavory
American history, but the points it does make are important to
contemplate.  Look at the charts at the bottom, folks.

http://defendingthepublicgood.org/2011/04/18/the-real-american-exceptionalism/