Turn your head and cough, America.
Whether it's Katrina, the oil disaster, various Supreme Court decisions extending corporate reach, the Arizona immigration law, the wars in Afghanistan, economic destabilization, loss of production related jobs, or whatever confounding issue which has raised hackles and fists (along with stirring melodramatic passions and stoking the obligatory news cycle) it seems like they are also opportunities to gauge response rather than to actually solve the problems.
You'd think with all the available talent America has, its innate creativity and ingenuity, an intelligent and satisfying approach to even the most provocative and exploitable issues would be reached. Hell, it's been done: America used to pride itself on that ability alone.
But with a seemingly routine spate of snarl-ups defining the nation and signaling loud and clear the final act of American international supremacy, perhaps rather than a steep and sudden drop in competence, there is an actual method to the mediocrity.
Each snafu is a test of the country's reflexes; each overreach by Corporatis Colossus is but an R&D trial writ large. Want to find out how the crowd will react when a real catastrophe (read: change) occurs? Poke and prod. Set up simulacra. Fetishize dependency. Addict and distract. Shock 'em.
Skeptical? It isn't beyond the scope of corporately endowed think tanks to proffer such premises. It's their job to analyze from every possible angle sociopolitical scenarios in order to come up with as mathematically perfect a result as possible which suits their ideological area of study.
And what has come out of all the disaster-level situations that have arisen most notably since 9/11 (but began many years prior to that) is the indifference of the American public. Republican or Democrat, Libertarian or Liberal, Neo-Con or Neo-Kook, citizens talk a good game, brandishing flags and preaching participation. But really, it is all too clear that they will basically allow anything---anything---to happen, even if it clearly runs contrary to their own interests.
So sated with high-tech addictions, so soldered to their screens, so disconnected from the tactile reality of the world their bodies inhabit but their minds avoid, the American people give lip service to that Rosie the Riveter "We Can Do It!" spirit but have none of the actual desire to drive a rivet, let alone participate in their democracy.
And the folks who have pulled strings, made gas prices fluctuate, tell you of the boogie men with beards and turbans; the folks who make policy, who steer the herd----they are regularly gauging the responses of the American public to further hone their future schemes, schemes which depend on mass apathy.
So today, when the report of firecrackers cause nary a start; when the latest iGadget is front page news; when the national fixation is on salaciousness and opulence; when Democracy is turned into a spectator sport played in stadiums with bold, blinking corporate monikers; when fewer people read history; when schools have to teach to tests to obtain funding; when the disparity between rich and poor is the greatest it's ever been in this country---and the Powers that Be (who possess the Power than Can) don't do a thing, then you know you're being tested.
Okay. Bend over.