Twenty-five years ago, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones vacuum-screamed, "I'm so bored with the USA, but what can I do?" More recently, St. Paul's House of Mercy Band slowed the tune down to a crawling waltz, and the fiddles and weary Depression-era vocals gave new life to the same idea: that America is a spoiled-brat superpower whose citizens are so doped up on their own version of righteousness and the good life, it leaves the rest of the world cold. For a lot of people right here in the U.S.A., that frustration has congealed into something like a ceiling hanging over thought and creativity, tended by a monolithic triumvirate (government, media, business) that works to preclude anything truly cool or genuinely organic from popping out... More >>>