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Great American Sin

Great American Sin

What are your thoughts about the following quote:

"What is the great American sin? Extravagance? Vice? Graft? No; it is a kind of half-humorous, good-natured indifference, a lack of "concentrated indignation" as my English friend calls it, which allows extravagance and vice to flourish. Trace most of our ills to their source, and it is found that they exist by virtue of an easy-going, fatalistic indifference which dislikes to have its comfort disturbed....The most shameless greed, the most sickening industrial atrocities, the most appalling public scandals are exposed, but a half-cynical and wholly indifferent public passes them by with hardly a shrug of the shoulders; and they are lost in the medley of events. This is the great American sin."
-- Joseph Fort Newman, Atlantic Monthly, October 1922

Sin American Great

I think that is a good statement. The fact that is was written in 1922 shows how long this has been brewing in the nation. Nowadays a person can be shot in rush hour traffic and no one will come forward to say they saw it happen. This indifference to crime that happens to someone else and not them is sinking us lower and lower. When it does happen to them they will be the first to cry out loudly why no one is there to assist them.

This shows just how far we have come on being indifferent on things that do not affect us directly. I believe the movies and the media are part of the blame by feeding us all this violence and negativity until the masses have become numb to it. Top this with it being "all about me" type of society now and you have a large uncaring population that could care less what happens around them as long as you do not get in their way.

Great American Sin History & Civil Business Politics

84% say America on the wrong track

84% of Americans don't like the way things are looking. But what's even more disturbing is the fact that 67% of the political class (that's your politicians) think everything is going just fine. How can the politicians be THIS clueless? Ref. Source 2