Kansas Isn't in Kansas Any More

..."I expect what we're looking at is going to be much more serious than any past crisis, partly because America has already evaporated, like the morning haze on a hot summer's day. You're not in Kansas anymore. Kansas isn't in Kansas any more." Doug Casey

After the morning haze cleared all that remains where America once spread from sea to sea was a lengthy farewell note that ended with a plea to "forward my damage deposit c/o General Delivery/Second World". This could very well be a temporary forwarding address for if the mortgage is ever called in, who knows where the mail will go?

And it's so ironic to think the whole thing started with soap; well actually, the selling of soap. But not just peddling the stuff the old fashioned way, oh no, hawking soap became a new art form! Not exactly fine art but fine enough to conquer the world in a century. I wonder if any of those old 20th century advertising pioneers every dreamed their new offspring had such latent power?

Unlike Professor Oppenheimer in the desert after the first a-blast muttering we were like "Shiva, destroyer of worlds"; surely nobody at Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn and the other pioneer ad mavens had an inkling they would really destroy a world. If it had all stopped with pushing soap it would have been OK but the technique was too good. The temptation to sell ideas and ideology in the same way as soap was very compelling to other players. Players with agendas that most often favored a few at the expense of all others. It turned out to be so effective over generations that millions have seemingly been rendered incapable of independent thought or action by this method.

We're nearing the anniversary of the day March 15, 1891 when George Batton launched the George Batten Company in New York. Other pioneering icons contributed their bit, of course. Such stalwarts as Young & Rubicam and Lord &Thomas added to it, the technique, but BBD&O was supreme. Slowly it built up: first, just print, with billboards and later movie screens added to it; the advent of radio caught the wave nationally and softened us up for that killer of independent thought...TV. Now the web?; could go either way. Lots of potential for redressing our zombification but corporate at the core and therefore subject to government whimsy and worse. Alas, no saving grace there.

So two hundred years after the founding, most of the ideas and tenets that made our nation unique in the world have been discarded or co-opted. We thrash about aimlessly and begin to resemble other former republics as they drifted into despotism. We look about frantically for something which doesn't exist anymore and we have no clue as to how it all slid away. There seems to be no one still capable of shouting, STOP!, THINK!, what are we doing and why are we doing what we do? Why do we have sinister things happening all around the world that we don't approve of and that we didn't authorize?

Terrible things are happening by default every day, at home and abroad, and no one is in charge. There is only motion and noise but no focused action to reverse any of it. Every day, in every way it slides away and we appear powerless to retrieve that which has been lost.

You're not in the USA any more. The USA is not in the USA any more.