A Better American Dream

James Kunstler, for once, has a positive word for us.  Consider it his Christmas present to his website readers!

Can't we come up with a better American Dream, even one that includes Christmas? I think we can. It would require the liberation of American citizen's minds from their thralldom to bigness in every realm from work to worship to recreation. If you think Barack Obama is a hostage to Wall Street, reflect for a while on the people's self-surrender to the tyranny of everything that diminishes us to mere "consumers." We're on a journey - and we don't know it - back to a nation of communities where your character really matters, and where character rests on whether your deeds comport with truthfulness. Many will be dragged kicking and screaming upon that journey, and many a dark night will be passed in the cold and damp on the way. But it will take us to a place where the hearths are burning brightly and the estranged spirits of our national character await a reunion with us: fortitude, patience, generosity, humor. That will be a Christmas to live for and remember!

By the way, I'm reading his novel World Made by Hand at night just before I go to bed, and honestly, I'm really enjoying it. He has, as it were, put the preceding paragraph into fictional form in that novel, and I recommend it to you.