The Biggest Irony?

[Beet]

IMO, Yes. When Obama talked about getting past "red states and blue states" and focusing on common values at the 2004 DNC, it was a good sounding, but quixotic talking point. It did have some substantive genesis, but it's value lay more in the fact that the speechifying frames he used tickle the bones of a certain kind of liberal than that it was the greatest crisis facing the country at that time.

The irony is that now Obama is President, and he has gradually grown out of that speech. But now, the idea of putting aside partisan differences is more relevant than ever. It is arguably the greatest crisis facing the nation. It is even more serious, I would argue, than the economic crisis that started in 2008. And I certainly have placed the economic crisis high on the list of problems. We need both parties to return to the spirit of Obama's speech from 2004. If only the Senator from Indiana could be so eloquent.

The truth about economic crises is that having a less money will never be the end of the world. This isn't the Middle Ages, where "economic crisis" meant you could be eating the bark off trees and mothers leaving babies by the side of the road. That's an economic crisis. Even if the US government were to default on every bond it has ever sold, we still would not be at that stage. In fact, we would be fine. We would have enough food, enough shelter, enough clothing; our factories, which when they run at full capacity can produce more than this country has ever produced, would still be physically there. If people helped each other, worked together, accepted the need for less consumption and more hard work and investment, we would get through it. Just as we got through the 1930s.

The greater danger has always been the breakdown of the political system. In the past 10 years we have arced from having no problems at all, to a dramatic but in reality not very serious problem (terrorism- which hardly kills any Americans), to a serious problem that affects many Americans' material well being, to, I believe, a serious emerging problem that threatens to the destroy the very foundations of our political system, which has ceased working. This threat is all the greater in that it has been building up now for many years, if not decades.

No enemy from across the oceans can destroy America; militarily, or monetarily. We can only destroy ourselves; and the most likely way for this to happen is if partisan or ideological differences to become greater than the concern for the whole that these differences are supposed to be founded on in the first place. In the most dramatic sense, 1861. But well before we reach that point, the legislative process; the political discourse; the genuine patriotism of concern from your countrymen rather than concern for your control of the political system they live in-- might collapse.

We can fight amongst ourselves with such abandon that, like bulls in a china shop, the political system that makes our government work becomes a bystander casualty. Where ideology replaces thinking; where emotion replaces the understanding; where winning replaces effectiveness. We can be the richest, most powerful nation in the world with the soundest economy in history, and still destroy ourselves in this way. How many wealthy families of antiquity fell through infighting? And in the process, we discredit not only ourselves but the whole democratic experiment that the Founding Fathers launched in 1776. In the grand scheme of history, 234 years is no eternity, and that experiment goes on.