Popular Malaise

My reposting of Jimmy Carter's Malaise speech has become the search item which brings the most surfers to the Grouse. One wonders what has been the occasion for its rising up in the consciousness of the Googling masses, if not the likeness of the impasse in which we find ourselves to that of Jimmy's day. Though then the America was under threat from the higher quality of imported products (along with expensive oil), when now -- at the far end of an epochal cycle of retooling -- we are victimized by our omnipresent thirst for bigger and more (along with expensive oil).