[Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning.

[Karen Aram]

Over four decades, the globalized, financialized, high-tech economy has stagnated the incomes of over half of Americans, immiserating many, while making a mockery of social mobility amidst obscene accumulations of private wealth.

Consistent with this have been perpetual and ongoing “low-intensity” wars for economic domination, increased threat of nuclear war and species-threatening carbon-driven climate change, the latter exacerbated by all the above.

But these issues are too big to worry about, no less seriously address, and they might damage our fragile patriotic self-esteem, while distracting us from sports.

Moreover, these problems can’t be laid at the doorsteps of Illinois state government, youthful local thugs or “Chicago pols.”

That’s no fun for News-Gazette editors as they lay out the next chapter in our local morality play, in which good must inevitably triumph over evil, unless it’s a football Saturday.

But never fear, the STEM academic community has got this; that is, they’ve got the game-changing Discovery Partners Institute to lead us into the digital, artificially intelligent promised land.

Who needs a decent health care delivery system when we’ve got gadgets in an imaginary research pipeline? Who needs a decent standard of living and adequate housing when we’ve got visualization and “big data”? And what self-respecting University of Illinois professor or administrator doesn’t want to be hyped to high-tech heaven by ever-ebullient journalist/publicist/stenographer Julie Wurth?

Surely, the Golden Age is within us and upon us, if we just clap for Tinkerbell, charge our smartphones and refuse to grow old.

DAVID GREEN

Champaign
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