It might have been interesting to have 5 individuals from Flickr search the Flickr archives to answer the same question. You might have come closer to a grassroots answer to your question. The ease at which images can be paired with simple narrative to tell a story is powerful indeed. It is frightening too to think how easily the same images could be used used to forward another viewpoint. Were the issues any different when President Bush was elected to office 8 years ago or 8 years before when his father was elected. The real issues seem to be hidden from the media. Either that or nothing ever really changes!

Excellent essay, different points of view brought into one. The sad part about this is that most of the Flickr's attacked the same problems, reflecting the "fixed" problems the world has today. Seems quite surreal that all the themes of war, poverty, climate change etc that have been introduced in futuristic sci-fi movies/ books are at their zenithal stage in reality. This essay pretty much sums up the negatives, which there are plenty of them, of the US "achievement" in the past half decade. Very insightful Magnum.