Trow argues that for the last fifty years the United States, at the height of its world dominance and authority, has been caught in a process of persistent social devolution that has left us with a world dominated by television...  It is a world emptied of all honor and truthfulness, a world whose only depth is the abysmal depth of self-reflection and "ironic self-contempt."

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The third moment to which Trow calls our attention is the moment of "vitalitarianism" (i.e., the cultural revolution of the 1960s), whose purpose was to overthrow the fraud of a life dominated by the "creeping catatonia" of television and the tabloid mind.

Curtis White, author of
"The Middle Mind"