As we've been pooling our despairs, the better to get all our arms around them, I'll have to pitch in a black cloud that has nothing to do with foreign affairs and little to do with beltway politics: the unfashionableness of adulthood, and the loss of faith or interest among what seem like so many in contributing to the permanence of a culture. Nietzsche wrote a while ago that everyone will become an "actor" and cease to be a "stone" — and without "stones," we can no longer build a lasting society, a true civilization. Bemoaning a whole culture's early retirement into easygoing entitlement isn't quite politics, but will it shape our politics? Yes. And has it already, led by our hippest of hip vanguards? You bet.
