Are We Just Happy Campers or Tickled to Death?

Anticipating Disney, IMax, Nascar and Reality TV by decades, a very perceptive New England wife and mother observed the following:

"Wherever there is a class that is to be made content to be plundered of its rights, there is an abundance of fiddling and dancing, and amusements, public and private, are in great requisition. It may also be set down, I think, as a general axiom, that people feel the need of amusements less and less, precisely in proportion as they have solid reasons for being happy."
...Harriet Beecher Stowe. 'Oldtown Folks' 1869

But in America today our rights are not being plundered as much as they are dribbled away or signed away, almost daily. Every Presidential diktat and Court decision seemingly adulterates or reverses values which were hard earned and once considered sacred by dint of having been fought and bled for in the past. The ceaseless erosion of our "unique in all the world" tenet is scarcely noticed by Americans who are in a relentless quest for diversion at any cost.

The latter is provided us pell-mell by a media so enamored of fame,power and earnings that it is wed to the establishment and daily utter hosannas. A wholly corporatist amalgam that echoes resoundingly from on high. Every new arrival in modern communications is sooner or later co-opted by government decree or corporate fiat. When done in this fashion over generations, it becomes a snap to go to war without permission; cast half the population into penury and spy on fellow citizens at will, without raising a whimper.

While the nineteenth century to us may be quaint and stodgy seeming, and fiddling and dancing seem tame amusements; the analogy is apt. Mrs. Stowe's general axiom regarding the search for amusement taking the place of happiness is O so telling in our world. What would that brilliant, perceptive Yankee author make of Prozac, Viagra, 3-D and Brazilian Body Waxing our, somewhat less than solid, attempts at being happy? Or would she understand intuitively that one manifestation of unhappiness does, indeed, lead to increasingly bizarre others?
Would she then, with wisdom and kindness, offer her sympathy and hope we would soon see the true cost of rights plundered and liberty in default?

Where's Geppetto?

We know he's out there somewhere, lurking, doing his Wizard of Oz thing, while his poor puppet is desperately trying to become a real boy. We can all vouch for the affable puppet. We know he'd be a clean-cut boy and make us proud. He would never go near that awful Pleasure Island on the Potomac and would shun the lame fox and half-blind cat, those Ivy League money guys, completely, if he could. They're the ones who made him spend all that money he doesn't have. He'll make a top notch real boy someday and never be an ass, 'er, a donkey that is.

Our hope filled marionette just loves the big white house you put him in. But he's a little worried because the lease is up soon and he's not sure it will be renewed for another four years. Our plea, mauling the famous words of that late, adored,
senior marionette is, "Mr. Geppetto, Mr. Geppetto, cut down those strings!".

We know because of you he's prone to fabricating stories and creating tales but he wants to give up telling lies...honest. That mendacious Jiminy Cricket has stopped whispering in his ear and gone back to Chicago. We're sure he'll be brave and truthful if you just cut those strings.

The Blue, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Fairy has been measuring his nose every day and swears it has stopped growing. She is ready to do the job of boy making, if you'll only snip away those cords.

Now, Geppetto, there has been a little backsliding recently; some puppetizing. The one about a war not being a war without feet on the ground. We know, we know that was you. And how things are getting better and better; strictly Geppetto the Puppeteer, not our guy. You went too far in having him pump all that oil out of the ground. Ya' gotta' give the kid a break. Quit pulling his strings...turn him loose!

Let him be all that he can be...or is maybe he already is. Ah woe.