I was reading A.O. Scott's review of Brian De Palma's latest, Redacted, in the Times the other day.  And this sentence jumped out at me:

"I think [De Palma] may have misdiagnosed the condition of the audience, which is not lack of information about Iraq but rather a pervasive moral and political paralysis."

I think Scott is definitely onto something.  It has never been the case that we have lacked information about the wars and scandals we've been funding these past years.  We've had an over-abundance of evidence of atrocities taking place with what looks to all the world like our tacit consent, as we wait out the clock on an administration that has from the beginning openly flouted the process we're now using to excuse our own inaction.  (I'm talking about the process by which we elect our president here, that quadrennial parody of democratic governance that installs the latest incarnation of the demos.)

The enormity and urgency of the moral questions we face—and the moral responsibility we bear—is drowned out by the deluge of infotainment we receive daily.  The current administration knows that once scandal erupts, you have but to sit tight for twenty-four hours (if that), and it will be overtaken by Britney Speers' latest shenanigans.  Or if it's really bad, you can just release another bin Laden tape.  I shudder to think what might happen if it got really, really bad—Britney Speers doing a dance mix of bin Laden's greatest hits, or maybe even having his babies.

We are, in Neil Postman's words, amusing ourselves to death.

Not that we don't know it, and don't like it one little bit, mind you.  And we would feel the pain of all those affected, if only we could.  Unfortunately, we are on medication.  But we wish we weren't!  We really do!

Tim Bugansky captures the spirit of the times in his mewling, self-indulgent, depressing article, "I miss my depression," which appeared in The Globe, for some odd reason, this morning.  It's not only reheated fifteen year old leftovers from Prozac Nation, but in a world with so much real suffering, the longing to be able to indulge in suffering, while taking a pill to avoid borders on insufferable.  Trading justifiable despair for eternal teenage angst seems to be our lot, and the source of our moral and political paralysis.