(paraphrasing):
Imagine an American city of a hundred thousand people. A city that was here celebrating New Year's Eve, and has since been wiped clean off the map.
An American Hiroshima.
About this time tomorrow, we'll pass that threshold.
NYT has done a good job trying to help us visualize the loss.
Scroll down thru the piece and get a sense of what's happening to us - to those around us.
As the Degrees Of Separation get narrower - as the disease gets closer to us personally - it should start to become more of a priority.
But let's not kid ourselves about who and what Americans have become. We've made Reality TV and Pro Wrestling the pinnacle of American popular culture. We love "real-life" drama and tragedy. Especially when we can take some of it and rub it all over ourselves in order to attract the attention of a world we generally see as uncaring - because we've made it that way.
How's that for "Irony is dead, part ∞"?
It's like we've nationalized some weird version of Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy - or maybe it's the logical outgrowth of the old OPM - except that instead of gaining unearned benefit from Other People's Money, we can tap into the psychological benefits of Other People's Misery. We can manufacture sympathy and reap the rewards without having to go through any of the real suffering ourselves.
We are a nation of sick fucks.
