AT LAST I’m running with the herd and swimming with the tide and being a good little conformist. Americans, once gregarious and other-directed, are crawling into their shells and turning into shut-ins. In fact, they’re turning into me.
The gated community is edging out open-hearth suburbia, and gates are only the beginning: there is talk of moats and drawbridges. Children once thought to need the give-and-take of classroom and playground to keep them from growing up warped are being home-schooled, never mind their social adjustment. And people who used to feel sorry for writers because we have to sit alone in a room all day are now moving heaven and earth to become self-employed so they can sit alone in a room all day.
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