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Dangerous Idea: Every American needs to SEE David Simon’s ‘My country is a horror show’ speech!


 
It’s a very big Internet, so you can be forgiven if you’ve missed David Simon’s absolutely incendiary op ed ‘There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show’ that was published on The Guardian’s website on December 7th. But if you’re reading this sentence, you no longer have an excuse and need to click over to said essay NOW and return here after you’ve read it.

You’ll thank me. Trust me, you’ll be smarter after you’ve read it. Go. Now. If there is anything worth your time, it’s THIS. Who wants to be ignorant? Not you, right? NOW.

In the days since it was published, Simon’s essay has turned into a shot heard ‘round the world. In my opinion it’s the most incredibly articulate, passionately argued, well-thought out meditation on America since, I dunno, something Mark Twain (or Kurt Vonnegut) wrote. I believe David Simon’s words to be of historical importance, that is to say future historians will read his essay in an effort to try to understand HOW the American people let it get THIS BAD and still allowed those responsible to continue to operate exactly as they had before. You’d think the economy crashing might have ushered in some change. And it has: Bad for the common man, but great for the capital-hoarding elites.

As Simon rhetorically asks—I’m paraphrasing here—“How much longer until the entire shithouse goes up in flames?”

David Simon’s words have incredible power. The kind of power that educates people, changes minds and makes them do something. It needs to be passed on and on and on until everyone has read it, even your idiot teabagger Fox News-watching Uncle Dumbshit. Especially him.

If you’ve already read Simon’s piece, what you may not be aware of (and the YouTube views thus far would seem to bear this out) is that the essay is actually an edited version of an extraordinary speech that The Wire creator gave in Australia at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House. Simon spoke for about 30 minutes and then there was an extended Q&A beyond.

Watch this and then pass it on. On and on and on. He’s not exactly offering much of a prescription here—that’s not his goal—but the diagnosis is spot on…
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.11.2013
02:01 pm
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‘We’re doomed’: ‘Wire’ creator David Simon on the end of America


 
David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme, gives a sobering assessment of the future of America in these powerful clips from a 2007 talk at Loyola College.

Simon feels we’re headed for separate Americas, where the “haves” exploit the “have-nots,” and where human beings will lose their value. He faults “raw, unencumbered Capitalism” for making our country numb to the plight of the most vulnerable among us. America makes the wrong choices every time, he says, and unless we change, Simon predicts “we are doomed.”

The man is a genius, and as a writer and journalist, he’s explored the very darkest corners of our fraying “civilization”—trust me, this is really worth listening to… Keep in mind as you watch that this was recorded a year before the world economy did a belly-flop on concrete.
 

 
More of David Simon on the end of the American empire after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.28.2011
05:54 pm
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