It is the growing inequality between societies that generate so many social pathologies. And grotesquely unequal societies are also unstable societies. – Tony Judt, “Ill Fares the Land”
Thank elvis for our wars. Were it not for our valiant fight in Afghanistan and Iraq to preserve American democracy, were we not over there spending blood and treasure and pissing off a billion or so people, we might find ourselves in trouble here at home. Why, were it not for our wars, we might see an erosion of our way of life.

Ahh, that's more like it!
“The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
“C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.“
So says Nicholas Kristoff (whom commenter Alan considers a girly man) – he had more than these few words on that subject in yesterday’s Times.
Words like these:
“Economic polarization also shatters our sense of national union and common purpose, fostering political polarization as well.
“So in this postelection landscape, let’s not aggravate income gaps that already would make a Latin American caudillo proud. To me, we’ve reached a banana republic point where our inequality has become both economically unhealthy and morally repugnant.“
Oh – in Afghanistan, today is the 33rd day of the tenth year of the war.