In the old western movies of my youth, the worst possible death was one caused by a ‘gut shot’. The mental image of the intestinal poisons seeping out of their confinement to destroy the body slowly and painfully was one that most of us wanted to avoid, thus leading us to laud those who allowed the victim a single bullet with which to end his own suffering.
For the past six years, I have watched and waited for some sign that the people of the US had awakened to the mortal peril of continuing the path upon which they embarked in December 2000. I have seen little or no increase in the awareness of the people and much to my dismay, the situation is becoming one that reminds me of a person or animal that has been ‘gut shot’.
The vitriol, lies, distortions of truth, and denigration of opposition by those in the media, as well as the political echo chamber from which these memes emerge, are focused on one simple idea. That idea is this: America is right, all the time, irrespective of all other considerations. Those who seek to understand WHY the international community is wary of the US are demonized as ‘weak on terror’ or un-American. The situation has progressed to such a point that even those with solid, intellectual arguments and evidence are stifled by media figures who are eminently unqualified to even offer an informed comment on such matters (See Fox, Tucker Carlson and others).
I weep for this once wonderful nation. As the younger son of an eastern European immigrant family, I was raised to be grateful to the US for ‘taking us in’. There were many times when I wept upon hearing the national anthem, and proudly stood, with my face burning and vision blurred, facing my flag.
What has happened to my country? Where have those people gone, who in the not-so-distant past, would happily help their fellow men? What happened to the REAL principles related to helping each other during the hard times? Have we become so selfish and ignorant that nothing matters as long as our cars have sufficient gas, our iPods have tunes, our cell phones are the latest greatest model?
These are the signs of a slow, anomic, societal death. The turning inward of sight, and the denigration of external input are signs of the type of focus one often finds in animal communities, much like lemmings. Humans are not lemmings, though. Humans are capable of learning from their mistakes, given sufficient incentive to do so. As I learned many years ago, pain is a great motivator. As in the old westerns, the worst pain results from a ‘gut shot’. In today’s world, the wound needn’t be mortal, but the necessary remedies must be procured, and applied in a timely manner. The pain is great, but the wound can be cleansed.
There are a number of remedies that I would embrace:
1) Regulation of the media, through a return to the Fairness Doctrine
2) Nationalization of the Oil industry
3) Heavy regulation of corporate business. Responsibility of owners/managers for white collar crimes.
4) A restructuring of the American educational system, with the abolition of standardized tests, as in NCLB. Coupled with a abolition of these tests, a rigorous testing schedule for students, and penalties for failure to perform. Increase the protection of teachers from parental lawsuits. Allow, and in fact, encourage teachers to return to the real subject matter, rather than teaching to a meaningless test.
5) National health care
6) Many others, but the point has been made, I believe.

The changes must be implemented soon, and the true will of the people imposed on the current system in order for the wounds to heal. If the International community perceives that the effort is being made to return to sanity, I suspect that the patient will be encouraged to heal, and in fact, will be honored for the efforts.

Our social institutions (healthcare, legal, educational, etc.) have as their foundations a set of cultural values that define what is good/bad, appropriate/inappropriate, beautiful/ugly, etc. some examples of our cultural values are: competition, achievement, equal opportunity, success, autonomy, material wealth, etc. Most of these values, as can be seen, are easily defined as the 'gold standards' by which we 'should' live. Nowhere is it listed that we should be compassionate, kind, mindful of the real social environment or of each other(with the exception that we MUST have more than the next person, otherwise we feel somehow belittled). This leaves little room for intellectual progress, which is necessary for social advancement. The social institutions are based on/supported by our cultural value system, which in turn provides the definitions detailed above.
The American people are most definitely involved in the deterioration of our democracy, because we are too involved in our own, individual pursuits of culturally defined success to care much about how those pursuits affect our futures. We are addicted to instant gratification, and feel 'abused' if we don't get what we want, when we want. That is one reason that we ended up with George W. Bush in the White House, because so many people were too lazy to think about the fact that you don't elect someone to have a beer with them, you elect them because they are competent to do the job for which they are elected.
The Bush tax cuts and the overwhelming adoration with which they were received(we can feel more fulfilled by spending that money on material goods, without worrying too much about those beggars on welfare, after all they are clearly not accepting of the socially defined realities/priorities), are a good indication of how most Americans think. We are all at fault to an extent. Myself included.