

Society & Culture
Egotopia: Narcissism and the New American Landscape
Must we bear witness to one more bumper sticker proclaiming that some insecure guy loves his dog?
“There are moments in history that divide eras, moments that serve to direct our attention, to inform us of a fundamental shift in collective perception, in professed values.”
Although he wrote Egotopia: Narcissism and the New American Landscape 23 years ago, and the book received no acclaim, John Miller, co-founder of Scenic America, was on to something.
“The emergence of the New American Landscape is such a moment,” Miller said, “whose significance, for the most part, is a steep detection of sociologists, historian, and architectural critics alike.”
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The [Greedy] New American Landscape
Keeping in mind, that his writing pre-dated the statue-toppling Leftists, here are my notes and excerpts from Egotopia:
So little of our historical landscape remains, replaced by the “New American Landscape,” that it’s hard to appreciate our present aesthetic deprivation, having few opportunities for comparison.
Must we bear witness to one more bumper sticker proclaiming that some insecure person loves his dog? We have been transformed from a society modeled on the professed virtues of balance, harmony, rights, and responsibilities to one that celebrates self indulgence in the name of self-liberation.
The ugliness of our environment is a function of our transformation from a society to communal values to one that celebrates and encourages individual self indulgence. Greed, ignorance, mindless science and technology, and excessive materialism contribute to both environmental destruction and a public confusion and ambiguity about aesthetics.
Self-absorption Reigns
In a historically brief 50 years, America has turned its back on community, as community has been traditionally defined, and embraced the suburban cultural breeding ground of self-absorption.
For people whose identity increasingly depends on what they consume, advertising messages are no longer irritating, intrusive, and inane but informative, sustaining, and nurturing.
We appear indifferent to the physical and environmental loss of our cultural heritage as, one by one, authentic small towns and charming country side are paved over.
Concurrently, we seemed pleased and satisfied in having created a physical environment in which it is literally possible to be no more than minutes by car away from refrigerated soft-drink.
One Big Shopping Strip
The great suburban transformation has remade travel, from one part of the New American Landscape to another, into merely physical motion. One travels thousands of miles to encounter the same chain stores, the same chain restaurants, and the same chain motels.
The New Man imposes himself on the environment, first by his obvious presence (car, camper van, boat trailer, videocam, screaming kids, barking dogs) and then by conditioning sales- savvy vendors to cater to his tastes. Ultimately, travel in America promises adventure and novelty while delivering standardization and mediocrity.
Of all the players appealing to the debased sensibilities of the new man, none is more capable, calculating, nefarious, and successful than the billboard industry. It has succeeded in corrupting and tainting public aesthetics, public welfare, and public consciousness. Billboards are intrusive, obnoxious, annoying, and, unlike television, they cannot be turned off.
America, the Once Beautiful
During the 1980’s the billboard lobby attempted and often succeeded in incorporating the following civic minded notions into law:
- Modify the highway beautification act from protecting scenic beauty to preserving “Communications through the outdoor medium.”
- Abolish the traditional use of municipal authority to remove billboards.
- Required that all trees blocking the billboard would by law be cut down at taxpayers expense.
The billboard industry maintains that billboards save the traveling public from being bored out of their minds. They stand tall on the very border of parks, across from schools, churches, hospitals, and even within sight of cemeteries. They are a common place on sides of busses, and bus stops.
Some cities permit billboards to be placed on parking meters. The U.S. senate seriously debated selling advertising space on mail trucks and neighborhood mailboxes. Billboards have been erected on ski lifts, on golf kiosks, in little league parks, and on soft drink vending machines.
What is Art?
The billboard industry has contended openly that billboards constitute art and has promoted the notion that we should evaluate individual billboards for their effectiveness, artistry, and eye catching appeal. Marshal McLuhan would have understood the billboard industry’s need to seduce the public into focusing attention on the message and not the medium.
Billboards hawking alcohol and cigarettes nearby schools are potentially far more insidious than the availability of pornographic tapes in an adult video store.
Each day, they’re subjected to the grotesque and vial commercial solicitations, the intrusiveness and insanity of which would have shocked our collective sensibilities only a few short years ago.
Today we do not consume to live. We live to consume.
The Advertising Mob Rules
We have created and institutionalized a mob which sets for us our societal standards, cultural icons, and norms of behavior.
They now determine how America looks and feels. We have been guilty of being too generous with those that would debase our society.
Long have we been devouring our moral capital. Many are satiated on the heady narcissistic nutrients that flow so generously from our cultural bounties. Yet, even they might realize that their gluttony foretells a mighty fall.
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News
Mainstream Media: Intentionally and Diabolically Unfair and Unbalanced
All pretense that the mainstream media strives for objectivity is gone
by Jay DeLancey and Jeff Davidson
The grandest mistake the American populace committed in the last half-century was assuming that our media was even somewhat fair and balanced. Likewise proceeding in the last two decades as if the Internet giants had no dog in the political arena proved to be a mistake of historical proportions.
Today because so many people, still, are conditioned as such, the mere fact that say, a CNN, has a website prompts some people to believe that the network have something of value to offer. Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, whose focus is classics and military history, says that the New York Times is “a shell of what it used to be.”
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Nothing Objective to Offer
The paper always leaned to the left, since it’s founding, but it did an intermittently semi-decent job in reporting the facts. The Times sent their reporters out to the streets to do hard-core reporting. The mission was to gather relevant data, identify sources, talk to people, find eye witnesses, speak to bonafide experts, attain corroboration, and then when they were sure of what they had written, submit the story or feature.
Their articles probably never represented a 50-50 balance – perhaps 55-45 or 60-40 in favor of the left. Today, no rational media observer would contend that the balance is 70-30, or even 80-20. Study after study reveals, say, in the case of covering Donald Trump, that 92% of all features are negative, and that is not to say the remaining 8% are positive. Mostly, they’re neutral.
If you are a Trump or DeSantis supporter, or a Republican running for Senate or the House of Representatives, for governor in your state, or for any other position of prominence, you simply cannot expect a fair shake from the press, nationally, and in most cases locally. Indeed, you’re likely to be demonized, endlessly, over issues for which Democrats receive a free pass.
Compromised to the Breaking Point
The New York Times and The Washington Post of old, as biased as they might’ve been, at least offered some semblance of up-to-date information, with facts and figures when they had them, and timely reporting as situations unfolded. Hansen remarked that today the people who run these newspapers are trading on the decades of hard work and the reputations built up over more than 100 years.
Those who put in the seed work are dead and gone and thus, obviously, have no say about what’s going on today. The Times and the Post, in less than a generation, are destroying their own reputations. The people who currently run these ‘news’ organizations are dragging them down at warp speed and don’t even recognize the damage that they are doing.
By 2030, what is now a shell of an organization will be less so, and it wouldn’t be too wild to predict that the Times could totally morph into something else. The Post is not far behind in devising its own demise.
The Pretense is Gone
Each of the countless newspapers that feed off of these two publishing giants suffer as well. All such pretense that the mainstream media strives for objectivity is gone. The good news, if you could call it that, is everyone on the right is now vitally all aware that this has happened.
Those who strive for integrity in elections, those who are on the right, and those who are routinely demonized by the left, understand what’s occurring to the nth degree. It’s not fair, but to know what you face is a benefit of sorts.
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Elections
Democrats Once Made Sense Occasionally
By today’s standards JFK would be considered a conservative
With RFK, Jr. already favored by a sizable percentage of Democrats for the 2024 nomination, I recall a visit I made to his mother’s home. In 1988, I was invited by a friend to attend a Democratic fund raising reception for a congressional candidate, running in Northern Virginia. The reception was to be held at the home of Ethel Kennedy in McLean, VA.
I was eager to attend, although skeptical that the reception would actually be held in Mrs. Kennedy’s home. I felt certain it would be held in the back yard, or in a special tent on grounds that were meticulously groomed for the event.
To my surprise, the event was held in her home and the hundreds of people who attended apparently were free to roam about the first floor without restriction. I found this to be totally amazing. Here was a home, that by any measure, contained artifacts which future generations would clamor to see.
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A Panoply of Pop Culture and History
Every room contained personal photos of Bobby Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Ted Kennedy and the entire clan, as well as awards, citations, and personal mementos. Guests could have pocketed their choice of mementos at any time. Apparently none did – at any time. More astounding, Mrs. Kennedy seemed completely unconcerned about the possibility.
As I meandered about the grounds, I made my way to the pool house. Between a couch and a chair, on a phone stand, along with the phone, was a roster of phone numbers typed and inserted in a plastic sleeve. I looked at the list. Ted Kennedy’s congressional phone number and his private number in Hyannis were listed. Jackie Kennedy’s personal phone number in New York was listed. Other family members, celebrities’ and luminaries’ personal phone numbers were listed.
Any reporter or paparazzi could have cashed in simply by copying the numbers on the list and selling them to the tabloids. This backyard, this yard, this house, on a typical street in McLean, VA had no fences, no guard dogs, none of what I would have expected the widow of a historical figure – a millionairess – to have.
People-oriented to the Max
I thought about all the time and energy that I, and most of the people I know, spend to safeguard our privacy, to ensure no one is looking over our shoulder when we’re doing something as simple as reading a newspaper on an airplane. Ethel Kennedy, however, was a public person, circa 1988.
It seemed inconceivable that an Ethel Kennedy could be so open and people-oriented, and not need the barriers and protectors that most of us believe we need.
As that night’s affair ended, I marveled when Ethel Kennedy stood at the door and bade all guests a fond farewell. She shook my hand and thanked me for coming as if I had been one of the Democratic Party’s most staunch supporters and honored guests in her home.
Accessible and Not-off-the-Wall
I was not a Democrat and never seek to be one, but this I know: by today’s standards JFK would be considered a conservative, or certainly someone ‘unworthy’ of the Democrat nomination. RFK senior likely would be in the same category.
Sure, many of their views and policies would be appear to be be left of center or at the center, but perhaps no more so than John McCain or George W. Bush. In any case, any Kennedy would be preferable to the tyrannical Leftist monsters currently in power, seeking to destroy America.
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