BIN LADEN'S LOST DECADE. Despite the navel-gazing and introspection prompted by the failed suicide bombing of an airplane arriving Detroit, a Frank Rich column in the New York Times strikes me as accurate.

We’ve rarely questioned our assumption that 9/11, “the day that changed everything,” was the decade’s defining event. But in retrospect it may not have been. A con like Tiger’s may be more typical of our time than a one-off domestic terrorist attack, however devastating.

And while we played, the best al-Qaeda could do was Mr Pants on Fire.

We keep being fooled by leaders in all sectors of American life, over and over. A decade that began with the “reality” television craze exemplified by “American Idol” and “Survivor” — both blissfully devoid of any reality whatsoever — spiraled into a wholesale flight from truth.

We win.


Via 11-D, with this summation: "We should be able to lower our expectations and fine tune our BS barometers to know when we're being sold lies and when we're presented with the real thing." To which I note, yes, if we're willing to work at it.

I also note, pace Mr Rich, that his hope for the people to identify leaders who can lead the country out of the sand trap it's in, to use his metaphor, is a false hope. It's the belief in leaders that gives us the cult of the CEO and the cult of the Presidency and the cult of the sports hero and celebrity culture in general -- and the resulting fascination with the shortcomings of those supposedly special people. Complex adaptive systems will do what they please ...