"That's about it," the Professor nodded.
* * * * * * * * * *
The meat of Frederick Turner's Frontier Thesis was that the American character was built by their struggle to survive on the frontier. In other words, connectedness. Disconnect people from the act of living and they stop caring about those things taken care of by other people. Get a burger by talking to a plastic clown and you never consider what it took to make that burger. Better yet, being that it's 2022, type your order into a phone and have it delivered directly to your door. How more disconnected can you get than not even having to stop whatever you're doing to satisfy your hunger? Stomach growls, type on the phone, doorbell rings, stomach satiated. You never even need to contemplate any point along the chain of how that food wound up on your doorstep. Now imagine being so immersed in the disconnected traditions you were raised to accept as normal that you can walk into a slaughterhouse and watch the entire process without once having the revelation that you are part of that process, that the cow's suffering, it's horrendous cries of pain and loneliness, was partially on you.
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