The first step toward finding a way out of this place begins when we take a flamethrower to Newt Gingrich cum Alvin Toffler style laissez-faire futurism, which entrusts our collective fate to the tender mercies of the marketplace, or New Age cyberbole that would have us pin our hopes to a millennial blastoff.

Except for those who directly benefit from the system, life becomes a goalless existence, in which the worst human aberrations start germinating.

[…] St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London. Close-packed, crushed by the buttressed height of the railway viaduct, rendered airless by huge walls of factories, it at once banished lively interest from a stranger's mind and left only a dull oppression of the spirit.

Although the Hampden Park blood bath of '94 caused Yale and Harvard to break off football relations for the next two years, they kept close watch on each other.