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It’s not that we thought things were fine. It’s just that this year there were no fixes to the messes we made—no underwater oil-well caps, no AIG bailouts, no reuniting the island castaways in a church and sending them to heaven. We had to idly watch things completely fall apart, making us feel so pathetic that planking seemed like a cool thing to do. This was the year of the meltdown.
If a meltdown could happen at a nuclear reactor in Japan—a country so obsessed with keeping up to date that its citizens annually get new cell phones and a new Prime Minister—we should have known we were all doomed. Meltdowns happened to the most unlikely victims. Everyone was so vulnerable to meltdowns that even Canadians rioted, though they did it only so the rest of the world wouldn’t feel bad about their riots.
It didn’t take a tsunami; anything could trigger a meltdown. Greece, a country so economically insignificant that its biggest global financial contribution to this century was that Nia Vardalos movie, sent the entire European economy into a meltdown. A meltdown of both the U.S. credit rating and Congress’s approval rating was unleashed over raising the debt ceiling, something so routine and boring. Sometimes, it didn’t take an actual sexual affair to ruin your promising political career.
Sometimes, crises sprang out of tiny mistakes that usually have no consequences whatsoever, like that day in college when you went to a protest, charged a couple more things on your nearly maxed-out credit card and drunkenly told the pizza guy with all the dumb ideas that he should totally run for President. Well, when the entire country does that at once, you get a meltdown.
There was even a meltdown of the once powerful American middle class. A year ago ours was still a country that pretended there was no class system, where rich people all called themselves “upper-middle class”. Now we are full-on feudal, with an angry 99% and a 1% who actually understand the things which the 99% are inarticulately complaining about. The meltdown itself melted down when Occupy Wall Street protesters and police couldn’t agree on lawn care.
It’s too late to cool the rods. We are either going to abandon the old structures altogether—nuclear power, the euro, Arab secular rule, unregulated capitalism—or wait a really long time for things to get better. We are finally going to have to choose between our modern love of constant drama and our modern laziness. I know which I’m betting on. Laziness has a really high melting point.
1. According to the author, what could we do about the messes we made?
A) We could spare our efforts to change them.
B) We could watch things fall apart leisurely.
C) We were incapable of doing anything.
D) We could stay cool in face of the messes.
2. Which of the following is true of the second paragraph?
A) Japanese fall victims to meltdowns easily.
B) Japanese rarely change cell phones and Prime Ministers.
C) Canadians rioted because the rest of the world wouldn’t feel bad about their riots.
D) Everyone could become victim of meltdowns.
3. The word “unleashed” (Line 4, Para. 3) is closest in meaning to ______.
A) triggered off
B) recovered
C) realized
D) restated
4. What do the 1% people know according to Paragraph 5?
A) They know that rich people are called “upper-middle class” in their country.
B) They know what the 99% are not satisfied with.
C) They know that there is no class system in their country.
D) They know that their country is completely feudal.
5. Regarding all the meltdowns happening in the world this year, the author feels ______.
A) indifferent
B) optimistic
C) pessimistic
D) puzzled