Do you really...?

Support the troops.

That, for me, is both a statement and a question. The question is not whether to support the troops, but rather in what way should we support the troops. Also, in what way do the troops support us?
It has become rote in this country to qualify any critical statement about the military or military spending with a statement indicating that you support the troops - I do it myself. I guess it's because people don't want to be seen as patriotic or insensitive of young men and women sacrificing their lives for their country. But are they sacrificing needlessly? What exactly are our troops killing and being killed for? Is it really a security issue? Is the colossal expenditure of our national budget that goes to the DOD (not to mention other security-related issues) really worth it? Aren't the soldiers supposed to be supporting the ideals of our country like Democracy, freedom, equality, and rights? But if you think about it, our country doesn't uphold these things.
We have a Congress that is completely inept at working together and a general populace that does give one iota about supporting their fellow countrymen. We as a country are still plagued by racism, sexism, sexual orientationism, agism, regionalism, and probably many other -isms. We love nothing more than slicing our country up by as many demographic factors we can think of, and then doling out opportunity, power, and money to those that are deemed most worthy.
The irony of the military support is a lot of young members of the military come from places and circumstances that the people who support them once they're troops couldn't care less about. They're from poor, rural areas where the lack of opportunity forces them to find something to open up doors for them, and the military is often this option. Also, the people with those stickers on their cars tend to be the very people who support the troops only, but not where those troops came from or the the economic circumstances that drew them to the military in the first place. This is why we see so many young men and women who have completed their military service left in the lurch by these "troop supporters", because now that they're back to being civilians they have nothing to offer - whether it be security or a political statement. Veterans are ignored by these "support the troops" folks. This is very similar to the anti-choice protesters who care so much about the life of an unborn fetus, but once that baby comes into the world they care nothing about refusing assistance for food, medical care, or education. It's all hypocritical, political bull$hit.

It's not what you think it is...

This government shutdown is the least surprising thing to happen since Barack Obama took office. It's been inevitable for some time, and to be honest, I'm surprised that it didn't come sooner during one of fights over the debt ceiling. The unfortunate reality is that this is exactly what Republicans - or at least tea party Republicans - have wanted for a long time. Republicans believe that a) the government is too large and b) that the government spends too much money.
Therefore, "starving the beast", as it were, is the only way to create what they would consider substantive policy to limit the size, scope, and spending of the U.S. government. To use an Obama analogy, they want to use a chainsaw to cut the U.S. budget, when a scalpel is necessary.
Sure, the U.S. government spends too much money. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, etc. all agree with that. But just what the government SHOULD be spending the money on and what it shouldn't is not at all agreed. Conservatives typically believe that we should be cutting any and all social programs; including education, health care, medicare, medicaid, unemployment, etc. Basically those things that support the majority of older and low-income Americans - and don't create profit. While Democrats typically want to cut things like military spending, tax subsidies to wealthy individuals and companies, and raise corporate taxes. These are two different perspectives on the role of government, and to be fair are worthy of a legitimate, healthy debate.
However, the arena for hashing out this debate is not a continuing resolution to pay the government's bills. Especially when Republicans are using it as an excuse to defund the signature legislation of the Obama administration, before it's even been implemented. Republicans don't even want to give it an opportunity to work, even though the American public essentially supported the ACA by re-electing the man whose name has become synonymous with the law.
So by shutting down the government, Republicans have essentially won this round. We can only hope that the American people see what they are trying to do and recognize that Republicans are not attempting to defund Obamacare (the ACA), but instead trying to starve government to the point of ineffectiveness, so that only those essential functions will be taken care of (which for them is military only). There's a good chance Republicans will take the PR hit for this government shutdown, but Americans are so apathetic, misinformed, and myopic, that unfortunately I don't think this government shutdown will have an major electoral impact.

How much do we trust the watchers...

The recent "revelations" about the "illegal" surveillance program recently are nothing more than a ploy. Congress has known about these activities since they began during the G.W. Bush administration. The fact that congress is acting outraged is absurd, since even if they didn't know the extent to which the NSA was watching us, they still knew their capabilities and what the federal government was legally authorized to do. Furthermore, the level of snooping actually taking place seems to be rather overblown by some to score political points. The exact amount of data being collected is unknown, but whatever it is it would be impossible for humans or computers to go through everything. They're looking for specific, targeted hits of information and keywords. If you're not involved in activity that would alert the NSA, you're probably not being watched, your emails are probably not being read, and your phone calls are not being monitored.
Now, with all of that being said, there is a major question we as a country need to ask. Even if the government doesn't use this surveillance to "watch" all of us, but is only focusing on specific information and people, should they have the right to collect this information on us in the first place? Is this an overreach of government and security? We as a nation haven't determined this. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, it seemed that U.S. citizens were ready to give carte blanche to our security and intelligence establishment to use any means necessary to track down potential terrorists. Now we're trying to backtrack (or maybe not even, but are outraged at the reality of what security means), but either we've already authorized the program, or it's secret and therefore we don't know it's happening. If we as citizens really were that upset about it, we could create a big enough stir to stop the program. Certainly we would be fear-shamed by politicians of both stripes into trying to preserve the program in the hope of stopping future terrorism and protecting overall security; but if we truly believed our individual liberty were being threatened we could stop the program.
I personally could care very little if some computer is collecting my phone records and internet search records, but I do have a problem with the NSA being able to sift through these records whenever they like, even if I'm not a suspect in any particular crime. I think that a lot of people feel the same way. If we want to stop it, let's stop it. If we think security is that important, let's shut up about it and move. Either way, let's talk about this in a real, rational way, instead of allowing politicians to feign anger about something that they've known about and authorized since the program began.

Government is...

The IRS. Good? Bad? Necessary?

I guess it’s easy for people to make a broad claim that I support big government because I’m unabashedly liberal, and therefore I generally support government assistance on many fronts. And I guess that I myself am guilty of defining conservatives as anti-tax, anti-government hate-mongers who care nothing for the poor and are only looking out for themselves, their guns, and their money. But the truth is that neither of these characterizations is fair.

I think the disconnect comes about when we define government as one, major monolithic institution. It isn’t. Government is as varied and diverse as the “private sector”, which is also often presented as having one definition and one goal. It doesn’t.

The IRS targeting conservative organizations that were seeking tax-exempt status was wrong. And while I most likely disagree with these organizations and their goals, I certainly don’t think it adds to democracy to have an institution within our government choosing winners and losers based upon political factors (to be a little fair to the IRS, many of the institutions filing for the tax-exempt status would not or should not have qualified – this includes many liberal organizations). So the IRS was wrong in this instance, but can we then turn around and say that since the IRS is part of “government”, then FEMA is wrong also, and so is HHS, and so is DHS, and so is the FDA. Where does it end? ALL government programs and institutions can’t be bad, can they? It’s ludicrous. The IRS isn’t even bad, there were just people within the institution that were doing the wrong thing.

We’re quick in this country to look for easy fixes and broad impacts. A government institution or program does something wrong – GET RID OF IT. But wait, wasn’t it performing some useful functions? Doesn’t matter, it messed up, so off with its head. That’s taxpayer money at work, and if it messes up its accountable to the taxpayers. Okay, fair enough. But what about all of the good services it provides – do those not account for anything against the mistake(s) it made? This is where conservatives and liberals seem to have the largest differential in opinion. Whereas liberals would say that the good outweighs the bad, and that there will always be government waste, but it’s a byproduct of the positive functions; conservatives are more apt to cut off the head of the individual, rather than treat the wound.

When there is waste in the private sector, we imagine that “the market” will work it out. That’s capitalism, right? WRONG. Government contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, even laws specifically written to benefit corporations. These are all examples of “government” propping up the “private sector”, because these companies no longer operated effectively or efficiently. And while it’s easy to turn this around and say that it is government that is at fault in this scenario (and part of the blame does lie with legislators), it is important to recognize that the same big business conservatives that are pimping the idea of the free market are the ones taking the government handouts. It is hypocrisy, and worse than that, it takes money away from government programs that help those in need to prop up businesses that are inefficient, ineffective, and unnecessary.

I had a discussion with a conservative friend of mine a while back in which he said that he didn’t like paying taxes because he felt that the money was being spent on things he didn’t agree with. I stood there for a second trying to get into his head. Not really understanding how an intelligent person could be so dense. I said plainly, “That’s a democracy. How do you think I feel? I’m sure I disagree with many of the things government spends money on that you agree with.” He just shrugged it off, but I think the point was noted in his psyche, because it’s a true point that no one wants to face up to. Yes, of course we all want our government to represent our individual ideological perspective, but I’d rather live in a country where I didn’t get what I want, but the process was fair, rather than live in country where a dictator happened to support my views. FOR THE RECORD – this is an oversimplification, because we don’t, in fact, live in a democracy, and unfortunately our government is more reactive to interest group and moneyed individual pressure than to that of the majority of citizens.

Sorry, you can scratch this whole post if you want, it’s rather disjointed.

The United [Countries]...

Our country is divided. We're divided politically, religiously, geographically, racially, ethnically, culturally, spatially, and every other -lly that you can think of. We're a big country (relatively), with a large population spread out over a vast expanse of land. Our climates differ dramatically depending on where you are in the country, as does the language. And yet, we try to operate this [so-called] Democracy in a way that is supposed to be pleasing to most people. IMPOSSIBLE.
Look, while I don't like to consider myself a member of a party, my ideas are much more in line with Democrats than Republicans (I go further left than Dems, so I don't really consider myself one). I'm a progressive. But I do agree with Republicans, at least from the very broadest perspective, that our government is too big. I don't mean too big the way that they mean it. I think the purpose of our government - really the only purpose - should be to protect the citizens of this country, and provide laws and services to those in need. Certainly there are complicated rules and regulations that the government enforces because of interstate commerce, but Europe manages to work through that, despite the fact that they operate as several different autonomous nations.
Which brings me to my point. The united states of America (lower-cased for emphasis) aren't working. The umbrella that is our federal government is just not diverse and progressive enough to deal with the changing face of our vast country and the different regions within. The idea of 1,000 people representing nearly 400 million is absurd. Not to mention the fact that the majority of the members of congress are old white men, who are so out of touch with what is going on across this country that it's laughable to say they represent us at all. They're from a country where old white men rule, and they want to keep it that way. The uprising of women and minorities in this country is foreign to them, as are new ideas about relationships and protection of privacy and individual rights. They don't represent us anymore, and it's time we recognize that fact and move on.
Move on to breaking this country up into different countries. I'm not sure exactly how we should break it up, but whatever makes the most sense to the people in the regions, I suppose. If people in Oklahoma want God to rule their schools, their government, and their lives, who am I to say that they cannot. Call this a new Declaration of Independence. I don't agree with God controlling every of my life. But if people in an area want that, should our federal government really stop them? According to the constitution, yes. But if you think about it, the constitution doesn't really make that much sense anymore either. It was created when the population was small, and controlled by a homogenous white male population who thought that they were the only people that mattered in the country. Rights were not given to women and minorities, because the framers of the constitution didn't even think of them as citizens; they were just sort of...there.
It's time to face up to reality. Our country isn't getting any better. It's been getting worse for a while now, but we blindly hope that eventually it will move toward progression (...the arc of the universe...). But what has proven this. The election of a black man as president? We've seen the reaction to that election, and the thinly veiled vitriol spewed at this man in the name of "politics", but really in the name of racial discrimination. His election was a major move forward for progressives, but I think the reaction reveals more than the election did. Our country is being held back by strong forces of generational disagreement, and just a general different in perspectives on the world. I don't think money is the most important thing in the world, and our current governmental, social, and economic systems are built upon this fact. People are irrelevant in modern American society. Well I say FUCK modern American society, we don't need it anymore.
Let's break up these broken united states, and create individual, autonomous regional countries, whose governments more accurately reflect the zeitgeist of a particular area, and can govern more flexibly and smoothly. It's time. It's been time. We're fooling ourselves if we really believe that things are going to get better. Moderates in congress are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship. The age of moderation, compromise, and cooperation are over. The halls of congress are now a battlefield, and neither side is winning or will win, but the tragedy is that the stalemate isn't only affecting the soldiers, it's affecting us all.

The state of the campaign...

The 2012 national presidential campaign has officially begun. It began last night with the president’s third State of the Union address. The president used language from his 2008 campaign, through the year-long healthcare debate, through the debt ceiling fight, as well as presented some new ideas that are blueprints for his 2012 campaign strategy.
It’s true that a lot of the president’s speech was overly hopeful and hyperbolic, and a lot of the “plans” he presented are never going to come to fruition. However, he is the president of the United States, and it is not only the duty of the president to try and make the country better, it is also the duty of the president to help citizens of this country have confidence that that is true. Republicans seem to be focused on how awful things are – the State of the Union rebuttal was a great example – and want to point fingers at whose fault it is, or who has been unable thus far to completely flip the economic downturn. It took more than a decade to cause the housing bubble and crash, to deregulate banks t the point where they could gamble with our savings and retirement, to deregulate industry to the point where they would re-form near monopolies and use lobbyists to push policies that protect them; the fact that it took a while to create these problems, it makes sense that it’s going to take longer than three years, two terms, or even a few terms to solve these problems.
The president’s administration has been imperfect to say the least. He’s let some people down. He’s continued some of the most appalling policies of the Bush administration. He’s been incredibly insular, when his stated desire early on was to stay open. He’s been dogged about working across the aisle, but has continued to do so even when his attempts were to his – and the country’s – detriment. However, his ideas still remain solid, and he remains an amazing campaigner who will no doubt excite the skeptics and those who feel betrayed.
A personal highlight I had during the debate last night showed that Obama is always so serious, and showed that the charismatic campaigner from 2008 is still there. He was making reference to outdated regulations, citing a particular regulation that considered milk to be oil, and therefore taxed dairy farmers up to $10,000 a year for containment. He goes on to say that with that regulation, it’s ‘worth crying over spilt milk’. He got crickets in the chamber, but the cheesy joke showed a different side of Obama than we’ve seen during his administration – the serious, somber, cerebral administrator.
The president will not officially begin campaigning until after a winner has been declared in the Republican primary, but his State of the Union address was an framework of legislation that he thinks will be successful in his next term, as well as issues he thinks will be politically advantageous in the upcoming election. His policies and campaign style are winners, he just needs to convince the American people of this.

The War of the Classes...

Class warfare is real - it is really happening, and has been really happening since...well, since our republic was founded. However, for the two centuries prior to the 1980s, the class warfare argument was being made by the poor (mainly) and the middle class against the rich.
Somehow, the wealthy in this country - or at least the wealthy by political proxy - have begun to make the class warfare argument of the rich against the poor.
Since the advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement, we've heard non-stop from conservative politicians that the occupiers, and President Obama in supporting their disillusionment with the plutocratic/oligarchic system we've devolved into in this country. It's been a repeated argument by Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, two men who certainly know something about class warfare, because they've been engaging in it for their entire careers.
The rich have been engaging in class warfare against the middle class and poor in this country for the last 30+ years. They've used every means as their disposal to chip away at the democratic system, all to increase their personal wealth. If we look at income disparity in this country, we see that incomes of the wealthiest people in this country have risen over 185% in the last 30 years, while middle and low income workers have either stagnated, or for the first time in history, gone down. Also, we've seen a steady decline in the tax rate for the wealthiest in this country, from a high during the middle of the last century of more than 65%, to a meager 32% currently. This means that through the rough economy of the 1980s and again during the 2000s (for most people, the top-tier continued to do well during those "rough" times), the rich continued to pay less and less of their taxes.
So how has the class warfare argument shifted from the rich against the poor to the poor against the rich? The rich control information. The rich control all media, and therefore are able to manipulate opinion. So as soon as the president or the middle class start having a discussion about rich people simply paying their fair share, you hear the wealthy (by political proxy) complain that the president and the middle class are engaging in tax warfare. The argument the wealthy make is that they're the "job creators", which has shown during this downturn to be complete bullshit, because they've essentially horded their money during these lean times. I'm not a class warrior, and I do agree that in good times people with money are more capable of creating companies (and by default, jobs) than those with no money, but I think this line of thinking fails to recognize two things: the first is that the wealthy are not creating companies to create jobs, they're creating them to make money (which I won't make a value judgment about here, it's just a fact), and second, just because people in the middle and lower classes don't create jobs, it doesn't make them less valuable as citizens (although politicians would have you believe this).
Bottom line: there is a still a class war being waged in this country, but it's a war of the wealthy "capitalists" - what Ayn Rand would call the moochers - against both the capitalist system, as well as the middle and lower classes. We as a society are being taken advantage of by a system of collusion between government and business that has set in place mechanisms to benefit the few to the detriment to the many.
And while the middle and lower-middle class still has a small voice, the poor have been all but forgotten, by EVERYONE. No one speaks of the poor anymore, because they have no political capital and vote in small numbers. We need to re-engage everyone in this country in a national discourse about how to best move forward in a utilitarian way.

Funny math...

Something doesn't add up. Oh, right, it's the idea that we can make up a budget deficit of over a trillion dollars by cutting spending. Our total budget is just shy of 4 trillion, so the idea of cutting essentially one fourth of that seems ludicrous. This is the federal government we're talking about. Sure, there are several places where cuts are not only needed, but probably necessary, but that still does not mean that we can possibly make up the deficit simply by cutting out one fourth of all government expenditures.
And the - excuse me, but *bullshit* - idea that Republicans want to cut government for the good of the economy is just that - bullshit. If Republicans truly cared about the economy, they wouldn't call for cuts in only Democrat-supported programs, while supporting the continued massive tax cuts for the top 1% of income-earners in this country, that got us into this mess in the first place. Not to mention the fact that the "Bush years", where Republicans controlled both the presidency and all of congress, weren't exactly years of fiscal conservatism or austerity in the federal government. Republicans want smaller government...whenever the government is controlled by Democrats.
So where does that leave us? That leaves us the with politically unpopular (though not as unpopular as politicans would lead us to believe) decision to raise taxes. And I guess "raise" taxes is not really the proper term. We should simply let the unpaid-for tax cuts that the Bush administration put into place expire.
Two arguments Republicans make about this don't many any sense to me. The first is that letting the tax cuts expire on the richest 1% would hurt the "job-creators", and therefore would be detrimental to our efforts at stimulating the economy and creating jobs. My issue with this, as discussed in a previous post, is that this has proven to be demonstrably false. The so-called job-creators have NOT been creating jobs since these tax cuts have gone into affect, and have in fact been continually whining in an effort to get the rate even lower. The second argument is that we as a society should not continue to "feed" the government more and more money over time, because we're just creating a bloated system that doesn't actually use our money wisely. The problem with this argument is that operating costs increase over time; therefore it stands to reason that it would cost more money to run the government than it did twenty years ago - or even ten years ago. But somehow the Republicans believe that we can go back to some magical government expenditure amount that we had at some magical time when everything worked out perfectly. The problem is that there was never a time, and there is no magic number. Our government costs what our government costs. Should we eliminate or modify programs that dont' work...certainly. Should we try to eliminate waste wherever we can...of course (we could start by getting rid of congressional pensions and lifetime healthcare benefits). But overall, any business person has to admit that over time, the cost of operation goes up - that's a simple fact of life.

A Bad Rap

There is a fairly common narrative going around the country today within Democratic and liberal political circles, that President Obama’s first term has been a failure. Not in terms of getting things done, per se, but in terms of living up to the hype of hope and end of partisanship that he so eloquently stated he would bring to Washington, DC and the country at large. I disagree.
I don’t disagree that there was a tremendous amount of hype surrounding the then first-term Senator, or that the Obama campaign took advantage of that hype to propel Mr. Obama into the White House. However, my disagreement stems from the idea that President Obama has failed to live up to this hype, or that he has failed to move beyond partisanship. You blanch?
The hope surrounding candidate Obama was that he was going to “change Washington”. While the specific understanding of this concept is rather muddled and ambiguous, and understood differently by almost every person in the country, the general idea was that the cronyism, corruption and extreme partisanship needed to end. So Mr. Obama swoops into Washington with a Democratically-controlled Congress, both House and Senate, and people start saying that what they always say when either chamber of Congress changes from one party to the other, that the President has a mandate. Just as a small digression, I will say that I hate this term mandate, as it undeservedly gives whoever is using an almost carte blanche authority to do whatever they want in the name of it. Tangent aside, Democrats eagerly got busy on their plan for overturning many of the more unpopular and unproductive policies of the Bush administration. President Obama welcomed Republicans, even though a large minority, to bring ideas to the table for shaping policy moving forward. The president tried to create transparency in government, and figure out what were some major policy matters that both sides wanted to deal with.
It was just about this time that the idea of reforming the healthcare system came to the forefront. For the next several months congress fought this issue back and forth, with the Republicans adding little to no actual policy suggestions, but instead repeating the message that the whole bill should be scrapped and the process started anew (euphemism for “kill the bill”). Republicans did not want healthcare reform; both because they thought jobs and the economy should be the number one focus of congress, and also because they – like Democrats in congress – had insurance and prescription drug lobbyists breathing down their necks, and stuffing money in their drawers. So the president did what he could to remain above the fray, while reasserting to both Democrats and Republicans alike, that this was going to be the most comprehensive healthcare reform in the last 50 years, and that they needed to figure out how to bolster care, provide options, and reduce costs. Republicans wanted nothing to do with this, so Democrats were left to fight this battle out themselves and suffered devastating scars from the battle.
Democrats not only got a bad healthcare reform bill, but suffered devastating losses in the 2010 midterm elections. The Republicans gained a few seats in the Senate, and won a huge number of seats in the House, thereby taking back one of the chambers. The president, though crestfallen over the demoralizing losses Democrats suffered in the elections, was nonetheless prepared to remain above the fray and work with Republicans on creating sound policy. What the president didn’t see coming was the influx of hard-lined tea party freshman that were not willing to work with moderate Republicans, Democrats, or especially the president on anything. Their view of government was that it was too big, and they saw their wins a sort of directive to begin the long, slow process of killing it from the inside.
Republicans, in typical “do anything to win” fashion, decided that they had to pander to the extreme tea party wing of their party, and as a result, the whole party shifted further to the right – both with regard to fiscal and social policy.
President Obama responded in his typical conciliatory fashion, welcoming the new members to congress and telling them that he was excited to work together. The new members were less than excited, however, to work with the president, or anyone else for that matter, and were hell bent on cutting government spending, taxes and any form of social “welfare” (i.e. any and all government programs) that they could. Their goal had nothing to do with creating jobs, but instead was simply pandering to their dogmatic ideology and the loud extremists that supported it.
Obama has since spent from then until now grinding out weak legislation after weak legislation, all in an effort to get something – anything – done, but continuously getting a stick in the eye from Republicans; both on the weak legislation itself, but also on his failure to lead. It’s a bizarre world. The president has made an effort to not only include Republicans in the discussion, but have given them more than ample representation in the bills he’s helped produce, even to the detriment of his own ideological principles. While some may see that as weakness, it’s actually showing a lot of strength and leadership, and the president is now taking flak from all sides for his neutrality.
I think the bottom line is that the fact that both Democrats and Republicans are unhappy with the president is a testament to what a good job he’s doing. Neither party really cares what party the president is a part of, as long as he’s willing to do whatever they want him to do. This president isn’t doing anything ideological for either party, and therefore neither of them can stand him for it. Although the American people might be frustrated by how ineffective government seems to be these days, it’s not the president that should take the blame, because he actually is doing what he said he was going to do, and he has brought change to Washington, it’s just that congress hasn’t yet received the memo.
To quote the Alfred from The Dark Knight, speaking of how Batman must be the bad guy for a while to do the right thing, “Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They'll hate you for it, but that's the point of Batman, he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice.” This is what Obama is doing, and this is what he will continue to do. It might cost him the 2012 election (although I’m not really sure who to, as the Republicans have a very weak field), but he will continue to do what he has to do, and sign weak legislation, because that’s what he knows he has to do to get Republicans and Democrats to work together.

The long, slow decline

So Congress finally passed a bill, and the president signed it into law (at the very last moment - our heroes), raising the debt ceiling and taking aim at deficit reduction. The only problem with this bill is that it's completely absurd and useless. Okay, fine, if Congress and the president want to give themselves slaps on the back for averting a downgrading of the nation's credit rating, setting a pretty low bar, then I guess they did succeed (or at least they tell us they succeeded) in doing so.
However, the fact that it seems like every single important bill that gets passed a) at the last minute, and b) after contentious partisan debate that essentially guts the bill of anything substantial, tells me a couple of things. The first is that the Republican party has made a huge mistake caving into their far-right tea party element, and due to the fact that they're scared about losing elections, they're allowing a small, vocal minority run their show. The second is that our government, and I used government mostly as a euphemism for Congress and the president, are incredibly myopic in their legislation, and are pushing the United States further and further over the brink toward become another former empire.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the United States is going to disappear, or become a third world country; I'm simply saying that the days of the United States as the sole global economic, social and military superpower are waning. Not only are there other countries that are on the fast-track to superpower status (e.g. China), but our legislators are passing laws (or not passing laws) that are not only not taking care of the problems that they are intended to take care of, but in many - and probably most circumstances - are actually making them worse.
Okay, so where does that put us. Well, we could sit around and lament the slow decline of our once great (or at least said to be once great) empire, or we could embrace the fact that our government is the reason for the decline, and use that as an impetus for changing not only the people in government, but the actual structure itself - I'd say it's aptly proven to be a failure. This could have two different effects; the first potential effect is that this could turn around our decline, and we could actual recover, and remain one among many superpowers, and have respect for the rest of the world, and not always be throwing our weight around.
Or, we could continue on the downward trajectory toward the middle, but end up being much happier for it. I was having a discussion the other day about the decline of the United States, and a friend of mine brought up a great point - countries that were former empires are actually happier in the middle of the global power structure rather than at the top. At the top you have to think about how to stay on top; you have to constantly worry about how your economy is going to effect the rest of the world, you have to get involved in skirmishes throughout the world so that you can "spread democracy" and "freedom", you have to make sure to continue to put out great music, movies, television and other media (like Jersey Shore, Dancing with the Stars, Lady Gaga, Transformers 3 and the New York Post). It's all such a big chore. I think that with a country like ours, which according to Sarah Palin is represented best by those in the middle of the country (although they only account for less than 30 percent of the total population), we would be happy to settle into the middle of the global hierarchy. Let's ease the pressure that has been building in this country, and not only face our fate, but embrace it. Let's continue to pass senseless laws that have no chance of success, and blame one another for all of the ails of society. It's worked up to this point in bringing us down, and I think that if we continue with the same veracity, or even ramp it up a bit, we could fall dramatically in the next couple of decades.

To quote one of my favorite movies (although not on my favorite movie list), Almost Famous.
Lester Bangs: What, are you like the star of your school?
William Miller: They hate me.
Lester Bangs: You'll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle.

We're 'them', and the rest of the world is William.