Mike Gravel is dead, and the world is poorer for it, but the tradition of truth-telling that he advanced pushes ahead.

A few months ago, The Gravel Institute released this vid:

David Cross: Why America Sucks at Everything

The premise of the video is that if you live in America and have (inevitably) enter into a social contract with it, you’re getting ripped off in the deal, especially relative to the other deals made between citizens and governments elsewhere.

The video is short and maybe even too short, but it’s enough to draw the general outline and easily prove its case.

These are the nuts and bolts of what Sean Penn was talking about, when he said that the primary problem with America is spiritual.

Take it from another angle:

The power of seduction in our everyday lives

This is a fluffy little TED talk by a pretty woman who is self-consciously leveraging her beauty for a bit of fame. There’s nothing offensive about it, but you would never know that from the puritanical screeching in the comments section.

Strange as it seems, I don’t think Americans like sex, and are wary to a paranoid level of anything pleasurable or joyful. The speaker’s comparative reference is to how people interact in Cuba, people we should be bombing now according to the mayor or Miami.

My country ’tis of thee, land of in-sanity.