I'm not recommending anything, Genie. I am merely observing and describing a catastrophic political and social decline in a nation that long ago lost touch with reality.

I don't place any hopes for the future on that political system. I expect it to just keep on doing what it's been doing and slide further down the road to perdition. If I were an American citizen, then I would hold my nose, go to the polls anyway, and glumly vote for the "lesser of two evils", but at this point I would do it with hardly a shred of hope that it would change much of anything for the better.

I'm not saying the Democrats and Republicans are the same. To the contrary, they strike a different outward style (deliberately) and they appeal to different groups of people (deliberately) and that's why their manipulation of the public consciousness is so effective. It has to be done that way to effectively divide and conquer. But....here's the key...they do NOT serve the public. They serve the rich elite which funds and controls them and sets national policy. That rich elite's position is secure as long as the general public are too busy fighting with each other and fearing each other to ever think of joining forces and attacking their real oppressors.

And what is the media's role? To keep people endlessly obsessing over bizarre divisive issues (such as building a mosque at Ground Zero, for instance) or ridiculous gossip (Tiger Woods, Brad and Angelina, etc), and make sure people are upset about something all the time, but have no idea what to do about it except spin their wheels and vent.

What is required to bring down a system that has gone this far out of whack is a full scale revolution. I don't expect that to happen, because people in the USA aren't desperate enough for it to happen yet. They'd have to be running out of food before they became that desperate. That's what happened in the French Revolution. The price of bread doubled almost overnight, and the general public began facing the imminent possibility of starvation. When that happened thousands of angry people took up arms, stormed the government installations, and the system fell.

You can't vote your way out of this one, because the 2 parties you vote for have been bought out. That doesn't mean they're identical. It doesn't mean one might not be worse than the other at some given time, but it means they don't represent you once they're in office.

I could despair about the situation, but I don't, and here's why: This sort of thing has happened in many previous empires. Empires come and go. They rise and fall. But life goes on. My future does not depend on the continuance of some form of government. It depends on me. It's in my hands. The power is mine. And that goes for you too. The government will not solve your problems...YOU will solve your problems. The government is just a big noise that won't go away...but it's not a noise I'm much inclined to listen to, because it would be a waste of my time, frankly. There are much more harmonious noises out there to listen to, and one only has a certain amount of time left in which to listen.