Ah, but we used to be able to deal with it….
I had sent this to Amba earlier, but I was thinking that America didn’t always behave as badly as we do now. We knew how to persevere through hard times, make fun of our plight and ourselves, and not suffer pompous fools gladly. We need to make more fun (in a vicious way!) of our moribund, arrogant elites.
From a biography of Thornton Wilder:
As Wilder worked on (OUR TOWN), he went for a second time to see Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers in SWING TIME. He found inspiration in the movies to feed his
creative work — not only his choice of an American subject but his concerns
over what he saw as the impending decline of Europe. (…) He wrote to
(friend) Mabel (Dodge Luhan)… “Watch the audience. Spell-bound at something,
terribly uneuropean — all that technical effortless precision; all that radiant
youth bursting with sex but not sex-hunting, sex-collecting; and all that
allusion to money, but money as fun, the American love of conspicuous waste, not
money-to-sit-on, not money to frighten with. And finally when the pair really
leap into one of those radiant waltzes the Europeans know in their bones that
their day is over.”
Even in its seeming frivolity, Wilder suggested, this American film was a
cultural harbinger of a shift in world influence from Europe to the United
States.
Hoofers for Democracy! That’s Fred and Ginger, of course. They give us a Depression era song to get us going….still applicable!
And if there’s a song, you know there has to be dancing….
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again… Advice KngFish (and America?) should be taking to heart.
Ambiance 
wj said,
January 16, 2013 at 2:08 pm
Thanks, Ron. You have just trashed my productivity for the morning. (I just kept clicking thru to the next sequence. Couldn’t help myself.)
kngfish said,
January 16, 2013 at 2:16 pm
Look at this way….you may be unproductive now….but, later, dancing happiness will make you enjoy what you have to do better! :)
Donna B. said,
January 16, 2013 at 10:24 pm
Full circle skirts falling to just below the knee should make a comeback too. And the sensible shoes.
karen said,
January 17, 2013 at 9:01 am
I’m just thankful that you are looking- uh- upward? I hate to say forward(lol)… and are posting uplifting vids and taking them to heart.
I kept checking Fluffy Stuffin’ and was disheartened- this makes it better:0).
Icepick said,
January 21, 2013 at 9:21 am
I’ve been thinking about this a little. We nay have been able to laugh at ourselves a little but I don’t think things were necessarily better in a psychological sense. At the time ‘Okie’ became a term to disparage those fleeing the devastation of the Dust Bowl (and worse was done to them) and characters like Dillinger and Bonnie & Clyde became heroes because of their violent criminal behavior.