In a world crammed full of gross hyperbole, gesture for gesture's sake, and omnipresent exaggeration, is art any longer possible? Is this a sincere question? Or just another grain of rhetoric in the sandstorm of decay?

This sandstorm, as is the nature of all sandstorms, reshapes the world every day, making it impossible to keep up with the latest caricature, aggrandizement, and fully-elaborated baloney.

It's not just that everything has already been said and done, it's that it has all been said and done to excess. We are all, therefore, 21st Century cartoons of ourselves, far removed from who we would rather be, locked in a situation comedy that has turned all too tragic.

To put the brakes on this decline into an abyss of mediocre mirrors, it might be possible for "art" to play a more challenging role via sarcasm about the driving illusion of our age.

"Sarcasm" you say? What the world needs is more sarcasm?

Well, yes. If the alternative is a sincere look-you-in-the-eyes accepting of the world as it currently is as a starting point, then yes, sarcasm is far preferable. I can think of no less painful tool (though there are surely many more painful ones) with which to begin the extraction of the horrible disease which we've collectively contracted.

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