A perfectly stupid 4th of July WAPO feature
Wednesday, July 4, 2012 at 11:13AM 
Ann! You could be doing this 8 hours a day instead of writing this quasi-apocalyptic crap for WAPO!
We are slaves to technology and connectivity! Slaves, I tell you!
By Ann Gerhart, who checked out an island of civilization in a DC Starbucks during an extended power outtage as research for this thoughtful piece.
The truly goofy start ...
Americans are a freedom-loving people.
Or, we used to be.
Before clutter, before Google and Facebook and voluntary enslavement to our kids. Before cellphones that make us always reachable and never alone. Before financial institutions reaching into our “convenient” online bill-paying mechanisms and taking fees. Before electric grids and fiber-optics and wireless transmissions that, when they go down, go down really big — and drag our self-reliance down with them.
Before we built our shaded backyard retreat but gave up our free time.
We may fly the tea party flag and protest against the tyranny of federal power, but in our daily lives we now are a freedom-surrendering people. Government mandates and perceived incursions into our rights as enshrined by the Founders? The least of our problems.
We diminish our independent selves all by ourselves.
The rest is a bunch of bitchy, whiney material leveraging the extended power outtage in and around DC. If she's trying to be funny, she's not trying hard enough. Instead of real humor, we are left with fanciful insinuations of "societal collapse" just around the corner. Ann clearly needs to get outside the Beltway now and then.
I suggest a trip to Plimouth Plantation in Massachusetts to get a clear sense of the "good old days" when we had real freedom . . . to crap in a hole in the ground . . . to carry water in buckets . . . to watch our children die half the time before reaching age 5 . . . to treat our women like property . . . to own slaves . . . to commit genocide against Native Americans, you know, back when freedom was real and we were genuinely self-reliant and were born with a life-expectancy well below 50!
That was living.
Now we're just all enslaved to Apple or Google Maps. Oh, the inhumanity!
These devices and services don't free us whatsoever. Just look around DC after the storm: this is true freedom my friends!
Freedom to write crap like this!
Reader Comments (2)
Awesome.
She doesn't have to back that far. My father was the fifth of ten children, all born at home in Northern New Jersey from 1910 to 1927, five of whom died in infancy. Four died after he was born. The last daughter and last of his family still with us lives today because of the personal care given by my 12 year old dad. Dad always looked forward. Up till the end he chose the 23 year payout on lottery tickets because "you make more money that way". He was not the kind of to mourn for the good ol' days.