The "Age of Uncertanty" will Test our Understand of Ourselves/ Tucker!

[KoKo]

American exceptionalism tested by real-world crises
What happened to friendly weather, cheap gas, and subdued enemies?
Cynthia Tucker

It sounds like the plot of countless plague movies, but it is, instead, an unsettling reality: In a laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, scientists have reconstituted the influenza strain that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide in 1918. They hope study of the virus will help them avert another deadly pandemic.

Perhaps they can. Perhaps our faith in science and technology will pay off once again as researchers find ways to fend off disaster. Perhaps our luck will hold; American exceptionalism, after all, is the core of our national mythology.

Or perhaps not. Welcome to the Age of Uncertainty, when we can no longer depend on things we have long taken for granted -- friendly weather, cheap gas, subdued enemies.

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But, as empires go, America is still quite young, and our optimism may be a bit adolescent. We are no more invincible than the teenager hurtling down the road in a fast car, heedless of speed limits, no more exceptional than the last powerful empire.

That's a hard thing for us to hear. Americans have little patience for any suggestion of limits. The Age of Uncertainty will test our understanding of ourselves.

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19723

[proud patriot]

1. "in an Empire it's always later than you think"

I forget who said it , but it seemed profound to me at the time

[catzies]

2. Good article.Goes hand-in-hand with Will's piece on our ideological prozac

Both are K & R.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5033225