Obamanomics, Ein Volk And The Twilight Of Mass Affluence

OTR has never been one to specialize, not since he realized he didn't want to spend the rest of his life researching 18th century frontier settlement in the Great Valley of Anywhere. Instead, he devoted his career to making broad linkages in time and space across a wonder-filled organism he called the American Experience. Of course there was theme and focus in his work, but there was also plenty of opportunity to examine the "big pictures" that make our national experiment so interesting.

Every once in a while, the Internet makes for some fascinating linkages that grab OTR's attention. The prelude to today's discovery occurred yesterday while reading Andrew Klavan's Diarist column-unfortunately not available online as a freebie- in the latest issue of City Journal. His article describes the sudden realization that the study of popular or mass culture can be a very defensible discipline for explaining who we were, are, and may become as Americans.

Forward to today and a blog post by Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds and you have all the ingredients for building an exciting information web out of Barack Obama, Madison Avenue ad execs, Depression "porn," sheet metal and leather "Aviation Collection" furniture, James Lileks's "Retromatical Diversions," Fritz Lang (Metropolis, 1927), and Dr. Joseph Goebbels, that most effective Minister of Propaganda for the short-lived Nazi Empire.

Here is your link to the Reynolds blog. OTR's only instruction is to take your time, visit all the links and browse the comments. Readers will find some very perceptive-verging on prescient- archives, a catalog one could browse for hours, some of the best humor on the Internet, and several reasons why OTR never wrote a dissertation on frontier land speculation in 1790.

Footnote: When you are a culture lumper as opposed to a splitter, it pays to have plenty of time for diversions like the one I recommend above. It is like exploring new cave passages, returning to the surface and describing your discoveries only to be asked how much of the cave is unexplored. Nothing is ever as simple as it looks. I hope you enjoy the journey.