Talk:Yellow Brick Road

Wow. But what is it all about really? --RomArtus*Imperator ® (Orate) 19:45, February 6, 2012 (UTC)

Overall, the "Yellow Brick Road" is a metaphor for all of the failed (and very expensive) attempts America made after WWII to make the "American Dream" into a lasting reality for most of its people. This includes the Space Race, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, LBJ's "Great Society" of social programs, and political and judicial actions that allowed increasingly lopsided distribution of wealth beginning in the 1980's. Right after WWII, the United States held a full 50% of the entire world's annual GDP. By the late 1970's, the percentage dropped in half to 25% and has stayed there ever since, all while America's poor have gotten poorer and its rich have gotten richer (income and wealth distribution in the U.S. are now more unequal than any time since the Great Depression). It was obvious to people around the world just how America was screwing up as early as the 1960's, and the article points out a huge irony that, perhaps more than anything else, it was the "British Invasion" of English rockers in the early 1960's, beginning with the Beatles and continuing on with the Rolling Stones, and then rockers like David Bowie and Elton John in the 1970's, who criticized so many aspects of America's society, politics, and culture - all while becoming idolized by their often-oblivious American fans. Even those fans who got the point at first eventually "sold out" and became co-opted into the failing American system (and when I say failing, I mean in terms of meeting America's post-war potential and living up to the nation's bedrock ideals - I am not arguing that the U.S. lost its "superpower" status, or became militarily or economically weak, or didn't "beat" the U.S.S.R.). Many of the events and people discussed in the article were/are quite real and the article often twists the truth into something out-of-whack compared to reality, both in order to add some zaniness to the article and to create a veneer of lies-based-on-truth that (hopefully) makes the article look like it could really be on a true internet encyclopedia. And I included numerous allusions to the "Wizard of Oz" in the article since that movie is where the popular concept of a Yellow Brick Road comes from. Lastly, so as not to be too negative, I tried to end the article on a hopeful note by talking about America's resolve to keep trying to "get it right" even after the Yellow Brick Road ended up failing miserably, albeit just in time for the approaching end of the world according to the Mayan calendar. --Sir NoNamesLeft (GUN) WotM NotM 05:00, February 8, 2012 (UTC)