Plus ça change,

plus c'est la même chose

This handful of Time Magazine covers from 40 years ago (with one cheat from 1968) shows how little our basic nature and fundamental obsessions have changed over the course of a generation.

Political fortunes still rise and fall

and (until recently) Democrats still saw "Kennedy" as an organizing principle instead of a family name.


For most of us, the economy still feels like (as "Chase me, ladies, I'm in the cavalry" once described "testicles"),

"being chained to the village idiot."


We have, once again, gotten our selves stuck in bloody, endless and expensive finger-traps

far, far away.


And speaking of "being chained to the village idiot"...

I still am having trouble adjusting to the idea that to qualify as an informed citizen of these United States you must now give a shit about who gets to hold the conch shell in some bronze-age Rubblevania half a planet away.


The way we do health care is still fundamentally broken, and costlier than

any sane, civilized country should tolerate.


And Teh Gay is still an issue

instead of a neighbor.