El Opinador Compulsivo

¿Un resumen de la situación actual de los EEUU?

Miraculous new communications technologies have suddenly appeared, transforming everyday life. Everything is moving discombobulatingly fast. Globalization accelerates. Wall Street booms. Outside San Francisco, astounding fortunes are made overnight, out of nothing, by plucky nobodies. The new media are scurrilous and partisan. Marketing spin and advertising extend their influence as never before. A fresh urban-youth subculture has emerged, rude and vibrant, entertainment-fixated and violence-glorifying. Christian conservatives are furiously battling cultural decadence, and one popular sect insists that the end days are nigh. Ferocious anti-immigration sentiment is on the rise. Both major American political parties seem pathetically unable to deal with the looming, urgent issue of the day. Insurgents practicing asymmetrical warfare have, practically overnight, threatened to bring down the political order of Western civilization. And the President has tapped into patriotic rage to invade a poor desert country, having dubiously claimed that the enemy nation represents a clear and present military danger to America.

Puede ser, pero aplica también a los EEUU en 1848:

A decent thumbnail sketch of the past decade, sure--but also, as I was repeatedly flabbergasted to discover while researching my new novel, which takes place from 1848 to 1850, a perfectly accurate reckoning of the late 1840s as well. And while it's an excellent parlor game to point out the resonant particulars--history really does rhyme, if not repeat itself--I've also become sincerely convinced that that mid--19th century moment is, more than any other, when modern American life really began. The future--that is, our present--came into sight. The way we live now is the way we started to live then.