What's wrong with us?

Years ago, long before most of us were born, people built a railway from one side of the continent to the other. They built it through forests, mountains and deserts, using hand tools. And it ran. And it was successful.

Today, we cannot get it together long enough to build a small park on the edge of the lake.

What's wrong with us?

Years ago, people spent their days inventing things and making them real. They built things, with less money and fewer resources than we would use on a normal day before lunch.

Today, we spend our days goggling celebrities on the internet and playing games. The hottest tickets in the economy are the useless stuff that, in years past, would have absorbed the time of wastrels. Games, gossip, gambling.

What happened to us?

We're like Louis the Fourteenth's uglier siblings. Useless, flighty, self-absorbed parasites. Fops and fusspots. Useless tits, who titter among ourselves about those rude, crude oafs who work for a living with their hands. People who go mano-a-mano with life and sometimes lose. Ridiculous people who make things and build things and turn ideas into useful objects. How declasse of them.

What the hell is wrong with us?