I could almost call it afternoon. 11:37 sneaks closer and closer to that heated noon hour. The class is watching an adaptation of the PKD short The Hanging Stranger. It stays consistent to the story but adds levels on top of the basics. What it does is speak to the industrial culture upon which the USA was founded. We are long removed from that physical industrial complex. We have moved into an information complex which is where the real money is made, but it leaves behind the majority of the nation.
The truth is we are a consumer culture. What makes us great (what we also complain a lot about) is the buying power of the American citizen. We can buy a lot of ‘cheese’ with the money we make. The more we raise the wage of the people, the more we have the ability to purchase. It makes me think about the Bernie Sanders plan to delete student debt. That would be a legitimate boost to the economy. We need that right now. Sure, the economy looks good, but it is a house of cards. Those cards, unfortunately, are built upon the faulty premise of exchanges between the nations being different or becoming different than they are right now. We are headed in a different direction thanks to the dangerous tariff game being played by our ‘Made for Reality TV President’
Such is the way of the world now. This world we live in feels strangely similar to the shape of the PKD worlds. We are living his dark future more and more each day.