america's military braggadocio, world globocop-on-religious-steroids just enables more people to support the underdogs in whatever equation she formulates, which is pretty much anyone who has any resources she desires.

american's, having succeeded in ridding themselves of the overdog british in their time, should of all peoples, understand this.

but america's so huge, it's a world unto itself, unlike europe, the middle east, or asia, such huge land mass, creating a cultural crossroads that precludes too much incestuous reinforcing of superannuated, sclerotic memes...too many crosscurrents from easy land access, more turbulence.

even with s. america down south, and canada to the north, (perhaps latitude is more deterministic to this phenomenon than longitude), there seems more of a backwater effect to the religiosity of the bible belt, which really has to be experienced to be believed.

living in hawaii 16+ years, plus sojourns of several months in oregon, nebrasks, and california had in no way prepared me for texas, for example.

it's quintessential modern americana, and even kitschily charming, in its peculiar innocence of any irony till you turn up the resolutionand see the devastaion it symbolises and spawns more of.

i got a chance to see 'jesus camp' in cult tv the other day.

it won best documentary at cannes recently, and the trailer was intriguing in its outright lunacy, so i popped some virtual corn and settled down to what i hoped would be a trip through human abberrancy at its over-the-top finest.

and fell asleep...it was dull, or i was wiped, i'll never be sure, but seeing as i'd missed the first showing at 9 pm because a friend came over to play some music, i tuned in at 2am!

anyway, how many sobbing children can you watch going into religious ecstasy without dropping off?

it's easy enough to lampoon, but the possibly apocalyptic knock-on effects are indubitably worrying....up there with bird flu-style epidemics, resource wars, third world genocide, climate chaos and what ever other nightmare-du-jour serving to keep me from relaxing when i want to!

blogging, aah, relax and worry at the same time....simple really.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty