A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.

Americans threw away their communities in order to save a few dollars on hair dryers and plastic food storage tubs, never stopping to reflect on what they were destroying.

America does not want change, except from the cash register at Wal-Mart.

When a society is stressed, when it comes up against things that are hard to understand, you get a lot of delusional thinking.

Consider how badly-built suburbia is. Many business buildings are not designed to outlast their tax depreciation periods, and the McHouses are made of particle board, vinyl siding, and stapled-on trim. A lot of suburbia will simply become the slums of the future. Most of the rest will be salvage or ruins.

It pays to remember that societies get what they deserve, not what they expect.

The skyscraper - any building over seven stories really - will come to be seen as an experimental building type that doesn't work well in an energy-starved economy.