Single man, somewhat overweight but not obese, spent the entire afternoon cooking for myself for the week: Beef roast with carrots, potatoes, onions and garlic; sauteed fresh creamed corn off the cob with bacon; fresh zucchini casserole with toasted pecans; fresh squeezed lemonade. I love to cook because it centers you in the present. At the end of the process, you get to eat it. I feel good knowing I can take care of myself. I do however agree with the author that having someone else procure your foodstuffs and prepare your meals frees up a lot of time for other things.

Gotta go, it's time to take my roast out of the oven.

One of your best. Excellent thinking, excellent insights, excellent articulation. Reminds me of some of the political essays of Orwell.

How do we get this in the hands of those who need the education?

Salon, today you made me sick.

I knew if I kept reading the responses to Lind's piece that sooner or later I was bound to stumble across someone who understood it. I'm old enough to have lived through the Carter period, and before, and so I've watched as the New Dealism of the Democratic Party was eroded away by free market fundamentalism, cranked up by the corporate oligarchs and their defenders and apologists, and ultimately executed by their hired help in the U.S. Congress and The White House. Like millions of us, after surviving the horror of the Bush years, working for Obama and contributing to a political campaign for the first time, I watched with utter dismay and consternation as his team installed in power the same old DLC, neo-liberal, free market technocrats and bureaucrats from the Clinton years with a token progressive here or there.

I was outraged from the first day Bush was installed as President by the Supreme Court, I was literally sickened by his re-election. The night Obama was elected, I ran outside into the night and screamed at the top of my lungs: Obama! Obama! Obama! I was that thrilled and hopeful that genuine progressive policy making, a real New Deal for working and middle class and poor Americans would be returning to government. I'm colossal disappointed, so far, with number 44.

Overvalued humans without values other than becoming the next overpaid, overworshiped fad.

That seems a tad unfair as applied to Obama, however the rest of your post I agree with. The level of personality worship that many Obama supporters indulge in reminds me of so many Bush supporters. Although I perceive some of his policy choices as too timid or too beholden to the same corporate interests that have ruled us lo these many years, that doesn't mean I don't admire him as an exemplary human being. He might yet turn out to be the champion of the change in policies I thought I voted for. He's a very smart man and he's capable of growth. We'll see.

For a poor working person, I'm helping as much as I can. I have regular correspondence with my representatives in Congress.

Right. Most seem to be the kind who read Orwell's anti-communist writings and mistake him for a Tory. I re-read Lind's article after reading most of these posts thinking "did I miss something"? No, I didn't. They did. It's fairly appalling to read such utter nonsense from posters who seem to have either not read the article at all or are functionally illiterate and have no idea what the words mean. Then there are those who will use any excuse to spew right wing blather. Salon doesn't need better writers (well okay Paglia can go), Salon needs better readers.