For my first blog entry, I'll begin modestly with a link to a wonderful George Carlin interview at Huffington Post.

In typical Carlin fashion, he gives a blistering appraisal of the American experience:

I think that human beings were given great gifts and had great
potential and they squandered it all on goods, possession, power,
territory and on a superstitious God that watches everything and
controls. These things, I think, crippled the human animal to the
extend that we never lived up to their potential. The same thing
happened in this country. We were given great potential. We were given
this great system of self-government, the best one that had been
devised so far. And we've given it all up for gizmos, and goods, and
toys and possessions, and - in this country - God, overlooking
everything and spoiling everything.

So... there have been moments in this country when people have, leaders
have emerged who were inspirational, and who could carry the people
with them because — in order to effect change in their lives and
experience as a group, they need to be led, and they need to believe in
something and they need to believe in themselves, and they need to
believe that they can change things. And they way that
happens is through an inspirational leader. FDR was that, Franklin
Roosevelt - he gave people something to believe in, and mainly it was
themselves, that they could weather the storm, and he got them through
the Depression and a fuckin' World War. So, these things happen and
they're interesting to notice - I don't know how much overall meaning
it has, I do respect what's going on as a true American phenomenon,
this rising up of someone who - maybe, I don't know - has the quality
to inspire people.