I may or may not have posted that video before, but it bears a passing relevance to today's angry rant.

Since the Baby Boomers were precious little coddled infants until now, America has survived on a diet of pure bullshit of platitudes like "You can be whatever you want to be!" and "If you dream it, you can be it" and "Follow your dreams" and other various bits and pieces of feel-good nonsense. It's boiled down to people thinking they should have whatever they want, and to keep bulldozing selfishly ahead until they get it.

Maybe Obama's slogan should've been, "No, you can't." But he wouldn't have been elected.

No, you can't sustain a top-heavy economy. No, you can't indulge unbridled materialism without destroying your environment. No, you can't treat people like they don't matter and expect them not to push back.

We can still fix our problems; I've seen it happen. But we have to put our minds (and bodies) to it. That means our minds have to be on something besides ourselves and our own selfish pursuits. That means we need to change our goals and ambitions from what we want to have, to what we want to give.