The Bitter End: Kim Kardishian's Ass

 Just when I thought American culture could get no more vulgar and vapid...Kim Kardishian has released a new book. Or actually it will happen sometime in 2015..but has already generated close to a million mentions on the internet.  Selfish, that contains contains 2,000 selfies composed by a woman who got famous of a sex tape. Not to be topped the American media has weighed in with deep analysis. The following are headlines and qoutes actually copy pasted from "news" sources like FOX:

Kim Kardashian's book of selfies isn't about her [www.fox411.com]

It's time for everyone to acknowledge that Kim Kardashian, 33, is a genius. [www.hollywoodlife.com]

Kim Kardashian's Author Description for 'Selfish' is a Must-Read. [www.washingtonexaminer.com/]

Well, I'm just waiting for the return of orgies and vomitoriums to usher in a new dark age...except in terms of American public discourse, I guess we are already there. It's worth noting that at the height of the Roman empire most people were excluded from any political power. Much like early Greek democracies which had more non-voters than voters, the empire was for the few not the many. 

 Unfortunately, I fear that in the decline of the American empire, we the people will be the first people thrown under the wagon...by ourselves. People at the edge of the empire are much better equipped to cope with our fall. Most never had any illusions about our benevolence. Further they are perfectly capable of functioning in pretty dysfunctional environments. If you watch, for example, doctors who have trained in resource poor circumstances, many can take the tools around them and accomplish a lot whatever the tools may be. 

 We Americans, by contrast, seem to want to live in some kind of delusion that the real tools of our redemption are coming...so we will just wait here without changing the way we do anything. The medical system throws almost half of us into debt at some point...but no one will back off of total misallocation of resources. The university system is throwing millions of people into debt...but NYTimes editorials try to convince us it's for our own good. Half the country is poor, but we still want to cling to our system...we delude ourselves into believing ISIS is a major threat to American lives. To put it into perspective over the last decade the number of American civilians American police killed is higher than the number of our soldiers killed in the apparently endless Iraq wars. But somehow both mounting death tolls have been nearly erased from public debate to endlessly discuss issues like Renee Zelwegger's face or now Kim K's ass. Celebrity culture is the new opiate of the masses. And I, for one, am worried they are going to overdose themselves right into a coma...