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What makes the American Dream such an insidiously evil thing, is that the ideology can tolerate only All or Nothing. And allows only one definition of Success. Real meaning lies neither in the absoute negation of the zero, nor the absolute approbation of the one, but in the shadowy interval in between.
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There is a bizarre premium placed on eccentricity by the hopelessly normal so long as it can removed like a jacket at the slightest sign that the peasants are grabbing torches and pitchforks and heading for the castle...
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If Art is to survive as a vehicle for humanity's desire to rise above the pathetic instinct for survival which requires only the accident of birth, and produce something that proves our capacity to love and create and make anything at all of beauty, anything that deserves to last beyond ourselves, then the artist can no longer alienate himself from technology. We have arrived at a point at which technology itself like paint and ink and stone before it, has become the medium through which art is best expressed, and technological advances are in and of themselves works of art.
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"They told you it was a war for the soul of America, but you didn't believe them. They kept saying you were the Enemy, but you wouldn't accept that, because you didn't feel like an enemy. Now you know they meant every word, and more. Now, as the Twentieth Century slips America's hold on it, you have become the Enemy they always said you were"
Steve Erickson, "American Nomad", 1997
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