Simon Jenkins is convinced that neophilia, the "raging obsession of the boom years", is history and Gutenburg's ghost has returned to live in Silicon Valley. In our recession/depression, Jenkins says, there's a new "cult of antiquity". He sees this in Obama's arrival at the inaugeration by train and his return to the art of oratory, in the current vogue for live theater and live communication and public congregation and, above all, in Silicon Valley's embrace of "The Printed Blog" (Josh Karp's new start-up)
 

But Jenkins, a Guardian columnist who happens to be on the left, has fallen into the same ahistorical trap as the conservative David Brooks. Yes, Jenkins is right in his observation that history now seems reassuringly familiar. But the past that we are all now embracing is sanitized and simplified. It's the invented past of supposedly symbolic train journeys in a country that, fifty years ago, slaughtered its railways. It's History for Dummies -- the kind of lazy, ill-informed generalizations which say that Obama won't do an FDR and compare him with Lincoln and our current economic situation with the Great Depression (and yes, I confess to being a dummy sometimes too).