i think i'm going to sleep through our generation's sputnik moment. every single moment is a pivotal moment, a transformative moment: you gonna smack me with the fierce urgency of now every five minutes for twenty years? don't these folks realize that the rhetoric of 'this is a dramatic turning point' has no oomph if you reach your rendezvous with destiny in every speech, campaign appearance, or pickup basketball game year after year? i wish they'd just give up so i don't have to mobilize my profound commitment, my will to service and sacrifice, my profound americanness, day after day after day...americans are optimists, and i'm going to commit to going to the grocery store, watching espn, nodding off on the couch: that's what you can expect from me in this moment of profound national challenge.

i mean, what does bo want from me? does he want me to compete with china? one good thing about having a government: i can turn over all that crap to them and maintain my extreme passivity. bo runs a state, not a movement. if there's stuff you want me to do, constrain me to do it or create a structure of incentives which would make it crazy for me not to, etc. you mobilize. you commit: the whole point i assume is that i don't actually have to do anything anymore: if you want me to take care of the less fortunate or something, well we have trilllion-dollar bureaucracies for that. you want me to commit to the education of my children? then why do you take them away from me every day and educate them yourselves? in an atmosphere of pervasive coercion and non-stop social engineering, you want me to commit? i mean, try to understand who you actually are and what you're actually doing.