Spot on. The other aspect you ID (supine 'horserace' corporate media) reflects the sheer 'fad-ness' of American life, where much serious energy and serious money is expended on professional sports journalism. Example 'the sky is falling' pile-on after Biden's performance in no way reflected the simple fact that wasn't a debate. And, both considered, seems to me the determining factor is the remarkable dearth of critical thinking in American public life...and I'd include SCOTUS's latest, to me, in turn, a subset of American exceptionalism (GW Bush, I'm looking at you) in the face of war crimes prosecutions. Talk about slow (in the US case, utterly resistant!) to responding to bad actors, beginning with Pinochet through Putin and both Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership. Thank you.
Spot on. The other aspect you ID (supine 'horserace' corporate media) reflects the sheer 'fad-ness' of American life, where much serious energy and serious money is expended on professional sports journalism. Example 'the sky is falling' pile-on after Biden's performance in no way reflected the simple fact that wasn't a debate. And, both considered, seems to me the determining factor is the remarkable dearth of critical thinking in American public life...and I'd include SCOTUS's latest, to me, in turn, a subset of American exceptionalism (GW Bush, I'm looking at you) in the face of war crimes prosecutions. Talk about slow (in the US case, utterly resistant!) to responding to bad actors, beginning with Pinochet through Putin and both Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership. Thank you.