Welcome to slacker nation

{this week's entry was delayed as we were 'stranded' on the strand}
   The other night while watching The Vampire Diaries (I know, I know, but it helps my wife engage in some mindless activity after a long day of pretty serious activity) I realized that the program has siphoned off the elements that make Glee such a hit (I know, I know, Glee is so screamingly gay it makes my testicles shrink, but I did see one episode focusing on Madonna's music that was really, really well done).
  But The Vampire Diaries episode had a high school dance party that featured 1960s music and costuming and it just hit me how much the series relies on faux parties and a solid soundtrack to keep the narrative alive.
   All this (inane rambling) brought me to a renewed observation of just how uninspiring the USA has become. And it's been about a 40-year ride to get here.
   First of all, why are shows featuring high school kids using the '60s as a soundtrack? Or in the case of Glee, any music other than what is contemporary? Because kids these days have nothing to hang their ear buds on. Hell, even Katy Perry's latest effort falls way short.
   The under-30s may have 3,000 'friends' on their Facebook page and follow 100 Twitter feeds for ten hours a day because they really have nuthin' to offer.
   I stumbled across a column by Thomas L. Friedman who cited articles noting the demise of the U.S. education system can be laid at the feet of the students themselves: they just don't care.
   One article, from economics columnist Robert Samuelson, determined that:
   "Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a ‘good’ college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school ‘reform’ is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers.” However, “Motivation is weak because more students {of all stripes} don’t like school, don’t work hard and don’t do well. In a 2008 survey of public high school teachers, 21 percent judged student absenteeism a serious problem; 29 percent cited ‘student apathy.’ ”
   To which Friedman observes, "We [have] had a values breakdown — a national epidemic of get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism. Wall Street may have been dealing the dope, but our lawmakers encouraged it. And far too many of us were happy to buy the dot-com and subprime crack for quick prosperity highs."
   Nobody wants to sacrifice anything now, we have been brainwashed into thinking 'I want what I want and I want it now' — I can have it all now, Mastercard and American Express tell me so.
   We've got a long way to crawl out of this one (since our attention spans have become flimsier as each day passes) and I fear it's going to take a catastrophe of MAJOR proportion to get us on a focused track.
   Meanwhile, the whole of Asia continues to gain on us (and pull ahead in some areas) while we get bogged down fighting off every global al Qaeda-inspired, Mom-and-Pop bomb-making operation.