Here are two must-reads by Jim Wright. Nails America's obession with war and fear of other.

[sinkingfeeling]

http://www.stonekettle.com/2016/02/the-latter-days-of-better-nation.html
http://www.stonekettle.com/2016/02/the-latter-days-of-better-nation-part-ii.html

Part I:
The crowd cheered.

What in the holy hell is it with these goddamned people?

When did the unabashed willingness to engage in the indiscriminate obliteration of entire populations, when did the enthusiastic willingness to torture our enemies, when did those things become traits anybody liberal or conservative would want in an American president?

When did genocide and torture become things we cheered as a nation?

We used to call people like this psychopaths.

Much of the civilized world still does.

Part II:
This is an America that once gloried in its science and engineering and daring. This is an America that once created new fields of study, new areas of endeavor, and new technologies whole cloth. This is a nation that once flew to the moon and looked outward toward the stars and saw the mysteries of the universe as fascinating puzzles to be solved and the problems of the world as challenges to be faced with grit and determination. Now? Now this is an America which looks in upon its own bellybutton in self-imposed woe and depressed misery and that regards its own science as a lie and a scam. Creationists don’t build starships and so neither do we. This is an America which quails in superstitious dread beneath that same starry vault and looks out at the world in fear and terror while Russian and Chinese rockets soar into a future that was once promised to our children.

[enlightenment]

1. Really enjoy reading his essays -

both the serious ones and the on-going story of Shop Kat.

[malthaussen]

2. Agree, this is good stuff.

I usually pass by "must reads" as hyperbole, but Mr Wright is wonderfully clear and accepts no bullshit. Love it. I enjoy the kind of subversive mind that will grant an opponent's premises and then demolish his argument by showing how it doesn't work even with those concessions.

Comments are great, too. Mr Wright's blog has a new fan.

-- Mal

[MisterP]

3. to be fair, most of that rocketry was to 1. cremate an entire continent and 2. keep ourselves

untouchable like we'd been before Pearl Harbor; Reagan and aerospace were bosom buddies, and he was a slave to astrology ...

and in fact engineers have the highest creationism numbers in STEM, since they see everything as designed--they've given the movement a HUGE reputation boost, giving it truthiness