Placone's Right

Ron Placone recently wrote a piece on his substack entitled 'The Disdain Towards Culture Should Bother You'. I think he's making the right point here, and his article is worth a read.

Placone acknowledges that the US has always had a disdain for art, creativity and culture but that disdain has grown recently. He says,

The US is arguably the only industrialized nation that sees art as a luxury instead of part of what it means to be human. We spend about 1/10th the amount that other industrialized countries do on arts funding and even that figure is misleading because most of that 1/10th goes to the military.

We value creativity about as much as a gas station does. People of the United States have made incredible cultural contributions to the world and have done so in spite of its societal outlook, not because of it.

A Picture I took last June. Red Roses! Just 'Cause!