Reply #16: Only winners matter, and winning is nigh impossible, hence demoralization

[PurityOfEssence]

One can't admit failure in this country; it's the best system that's ever existed. As the eighties taught us, if you're not making it here, it's because you're defective: lazy, stupid, sub-standard, shiftless, or just plain inferior.

Slam this smack-dab up against the creeping glacier of impenetrable cheesy flag-waving and reveling in excess, and you have depression. Don't ever admit weakness, either: emotional problems are proof of your inferiority. It's a blustering tough-guy society, and those who can't take it don't deserve much at all.

Is it any wonder that the country with the greatest disparity in wealth in the industrialized world AND the highest rate of belief in supreme beings also has the highest rate of insanity? Not to me.

Depression? Feh. Some would just call it prescience.

How do you square reality with fantasy and still keep an even keel?