21st Century Living Is “Extreme”
American culture has always had its extreme fads, like flagpole-sitting or goldfish-eating; the pic here featuring “extreme tree trimming” from the 1880s is an example. That’s hilarious, IMO.
But these are curiosities. On a far broader scale, we’re starting to see the U.S. split into groups of polar opposites: a small number of winners, offset by a huge crowd of losers.
It’s not news that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. But the opening of that gaping chasm is only one example of what we see in virtually every dimension of life in today’s world, which could be called The Great Cultural Divide. (more…)
Exactly what are “basic human rights?” Where do they begin, and where do they end? It’s a matter open to debate, to be sure.
From 
I hope readers get the same broad smile from this as I did.
I ran into some people visiting from Sweden, wine tasting the other day. Chatting it up, as I am wont to do, I asked about the Swedes’ perception of Trump. One replied, “He may have 5 or 10 percent support. The vast majority of us simply feel sorry for you. We’re in disbelief that this happened in the United States. If it had happened, for instance, in Paraguay, I think we all would have said, ‘OK, whatever.’ But we never, ever thought it could happen in America.”
Now that my kids have entered the workforce, I get to reflect on what they’re doing with their lives and the impact they will ultimately have on human civilization. I’m very glad that neither of them works for Nestle (or Coke, or McDonalds, etc.). I know everyone has to make a living, but I feel sorry for those who need to do so by making the world a dirtier and more disease-prone place to live.
Occasionally one hears that the two major parties in U.S. politics are essentially indistinguishable from one another, and in some areas that actually is true. For example, regardless of who’s elected president in 2020, the country will still have a huge military that is deployed with wanton aggression around the globe. 
Hip outfit! Good things are happening all over the world, firmly rooted in humankind’s commitment to survival. Though Britain has a long way to go before it will have 
One doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that major sociological phenomena in our culture doesn’t “just happen.” Take the climate change denial movement as an example, how did it come to pass that the judgment of the scientific community is successfully called into question by a significantly large group of people? How did a matter of science become a function of one’s political leanings? 
