Peak Oil News and Message Boards

"Did we really imagine people would feel threatened by the number 2?" USAnians are a very strange lot, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed on his road trip with Gustave de Baumont in 1831. The Bible-thumping, coon-skinned, populist utopians fascinated him. Tocqueville blithely compared the young country’s despotic democratic government, then hip-deep in the ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples, to a parent protective of “perpetual children.” Anticipating Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent by 157 years, Tocqueville observed that the US brand of fervent fascism doesn’t try to break wills but rather bends them, allowing government to preside over people like “a flock of timid animals.” These timid animals nonetheless hunted the remnant bands of the First Nations like a wolf pack. Adult male scalps fetched about $100 in silver during Tocqueville’s visit, and about half that for women and children. Such hefty sums attracted those given