Reverend Billy: What Is the Future of America?
America — to much of the world that word means the future.
We get drunk on the future easily. In the 50’s we were besotted by nuclear power. That was supposed to be the future. Nuclear power would do every little thing. The advertisements said that in the nuclear future we would only have to work 10 minutes a day.
We get high on technological breakthroughs. At the beginning of the first Iraqi War, smart bombs were the rage. The image of a bomb that had human characteristics caught our fancy. The bomb with a brain could make sharp turns, circle around, make decisions, stealthily stop and go. Newspaper cartoons featured bombs knocking on the front door of a dismayed Saddam Hussein, politely asking to pay a visit.
Wall Street applied a mathematical technology to securities, and invented “credit default swaps.” The land of derivatives suckered much of the financial world, but also took in the United States government hook, line, and sinker. The magic of it allowed millions of us to use our homes …
Read the original article at Huffington Post
