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Comparing Politicians to Hitler Is Stupid

The debate over firearms is bringing out extreme levels of stupidity in people. Right-wingers who think gun control means taking away everyone’s right to bear arms are comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Left-wingers did the same to President Bush over his war policies.

It’s the lowest common denominator; the dumbest of the dumb.

Mood music:

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On the Drudge Report, Obama’s picture was lumped in with images of Hitler and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin next to a story about Vice President Biden’s suggestion that Obama will target guns through an executive order. The Hitler comparisons have actually been going on since Obama’s administration began four years ago:

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When George W. Bush was in the Oval Office and debate raged over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the left put out the same suggestions:

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So if you disagree with the president, Republican or Democrat, it’s OK to compare them to a man who sent millions of innocent people to the gas chamber. Wanting to put controls on the type of weapon American citizens can access is suddenly on par with genocide. The logic seems to be that if Obama “takes away” your guns, he is going to invade a bunch of countries next.

I can’t say that I haven’t used the same tactics. Back during the first Gulf War, I used a writing assignment in my college poetry class to compare the first President Bush to Hitler. My professor, who was a lot further to the left than I was at the time, suggested in red marker that I was taking things too far.

When we get angry with our leaders, this is what happens. We go to the extreme.

Frankly, I think both sides oversimplify things. In moments of anger, we turn off the part of the brain that controls reason.

I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life when my anger turned off that switch. I made a lot of extreme statements about our political leaders. But somewhere along the way, I made an effort to grow up and not let my fear and anger override my reason.

I suggest the folks comparing Obama to Hitler do the same.

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Defending Joe Biden (Updated June 1, 2015)

Updated June 1, 2015: The Vice President, who has suffered a lot of loss in his life, has more character and depth beneath his outward image of buffoonery than most people know. With news that his son Beau has died of brain cancer, I’m remembering the post below, originally written in 2013. I also recommend this column from Ezra Klein on Biden’s grief perspective.

I’ll surely get a boatload of criticism for what I’m about to do: defend Vice President Joseph Biden.

As you know, the man who’s a heartbeat away from the presidency tends to run his mouth a lot and get into trouble. During the signing ceremony for Obamacare in 2010, the mics were on as he told President Obama that “This is a big fucking deal.” During the 2012 presidential campaign, Biden told a Virginia audience that “we won North Carolina in 2008 and we can win it again.” That was the same event where he told everyone that the Republicans “want to put you back in chains.”

The vice president also has a habit of violating the personal space of those he’s talking to. Yesterday, as he swore in new senators, he embraced the wife of Maine Sen. Angus King a bit long for the comfort of some. He also told the husband of North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp to “spread your legs, you’re going to be frisked.” Biden said this after the photographer asked them to drop their hands for the photo. “You say that to somebody in North Dakota they think it’s a frisk,” Biden joked. “They think you’re in trouble, right?” (The Atlantic Wire has more on these incidents.)

People like to call him Uncle Joe, and not in a good way. One of my friends compared him to the crazy, creepy uncle everyone tries to stay away from during family gatherings. If you’re a Democrat, he’s just a lovable old-timer who has no verbal filter. If you’re a Republican, he’s an idiot and borderline sexual predator.

I agree the guy runs his mouth too much and gets in a bit too close to people. President Lyndon Johnson used to do the same thing. It’s famously known as The Johnson Treatment.

But I also think people make a bigger deal out of Biden’s antics than what’s deserved. A lot of politicians get in close during hugs and handshakes, especially the older folks. He’s also not the first politician to forget which town he’s in during a speech. When you travel all the time, that’s going to happen.

But here’s the main reason I’m going to defend the man: He’s been through a lot in his life and has worked his ass off despite it all. Whether you agree with his politics or not, take a look at his history, and you’ll have to admit he’s done some inspirational things in his life:

  • In 1972, a few weeks after he was first elected to the Senate, Biden’s wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in a car wreck while Christmas shopping. Biden’s two sons, Beau and Hunter, were critically injured in the accident but made full recoveries.
  • To keep close to his kids, he commuted from Delaware to DC every day by train — 90 minutes each way. He did that his entire 35 years as a senator.
  • In 1988, the same year he first ran for president, Biden suffered a series of aneurysms and at one point was given last rites. He recovered and continued to work tirelessly as a senator in the years that followed.
  • As senator he led the fight to pass the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. That law had several measures and provided billions of dollars to help women suffering from domestic violence and other gender-based crimes.
  • He was also among the first to call for action when a genocide was unfolding in the Balkans. Specifically, he fought to get Bosnian Muslims weapons and training to defend themselves against the mass slaughter taking place. Those policies eventually helped end the Bosnian war.

Having been through plenty of adversity myself, I have a soft spot for people who overcome devastating personal setbacks to make a positive mark on the world.

Call him Crazy Uncle Joe if it makes you feel better. In my opinion, his good points far outweigh his lack of filter.

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Politics, Facebook Friends and the Damage Done

After all my blogging this past election season about how friends and family shouldn’t become enemies over politics and how we all need to knock off the conspiracy theories and name-calling, I’m reviewing my Facebook friends list in search of damage. Here’s my final analysis.

It turns out one person unfriended me. I considered her a solid Facebook friend. We went to high school together and shared many musical tastes. We both post a lot about our families and love and care for our children. But last week she cut me loose without explanation. I think I know why.

She has always been the type to complain a lot on Facebook, such as fights with her husband and hatred of her job. She held nothing back. That’s her right. It is her Facebook account, after all. The day after the election, she melted down, suggesting that things would never be OK again and that we were all doomed. I mentioned her comment in my day-after-the-election post, though I didn’t mention her by name. My goal was to cheer up her and others crushed by Romney’s defeat by offering some “life goes on” perspective. But she apparently wasn’t up for it.

No hard feelings. I don’t regret what I did, and I did keep her comment anonymous.

Meanwhile, I unfriended four people, including a husband and wife, last week. I didn’t do so because these people were liberal or conservative. I did it because I felt they were going over the top and painting everyone who disagreed with them as tyrants.

One former and very liberal friend finally gave me more than I could take when he posted a meme trivializing the power of prayer compared to science. He had been posting stuff like that all along and pinning all the world’s folly on Republicans. Believing as I do that both parties are equally to blame for our current economic and political troubles and in the power of prayer, I decided I didn’t need to see his bullshit anymore.

I hated unfriending the husband and wife. I particularly liked the husband, given our common musical tastes and the paths we both crossed back in the day, even if we didn’t know each other at the time. But they were taking their hatred of President Obama to levels I finally found too toxic for my blood.

If they had simply posted stuff about how Romney was the better choice for America, I’d have been fine with it. But everything became a conspiracy to them. Obama went from being the least capable steward of the economy to someone like Hitler, a guy who happily kills women and children and then covers it up. Their posts intensified after the election, and that’s when I respectfully cut ties.

All in all, I’d say the damage wasn’t too terrible. That’s a small amount of unfriending considering I have 2,334 friends, family and business associates in my network.

I choose to believe most of us got through all the vitriol in one piece. Hopefully, we can enjoy each other’s company a bit more now.

At least until the next election.

Alternate Politics

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My Name Is Bill, and I’m with the Religious Left

I’ve been on a spiritual high for the last several years. I became a Catholic in 2006 and since then have tried to live my faith to the fullest. I’ve been on three Catholic retreats, one as a team leader, and have spoken up about my beliefs regularly in this blog.

I’ve worked hard to become a more peaceful person instead of the Bill who would flip people off on the highway and throw rocks through windows when he was young and stupid. I’ve allowed God into my life as part of my battle over personal demons like addiction and bitterness toward some individuals. I’m still a long, long way from perfect. But I’m better than I used to be, and that counts for something.

But it’s been getting harder.

 

A lot of people who claim to be Christians do the very thing Jesus taught us not to do: Judge other people, in stark black and white. Sinners are complex beings, but the so-called Religious Right keeps telling us it’s pretty clear: If someone does everything to live a good, Christian life — feeding the poor, frowning upon war and violence in general and being kind to neighbors and strangers alike — they may still go to Hell.

Why? Because that person votes for Democrats.

Democrats tend to consider themselves pro-choice or, as the Religious Right calls it, pro-abortion. To be pro-choice is to embrace the murder of unborn babies. The Religious Right has taken over the Republican Party, and God-loving candidates go on about protecting the sanctity of life, meaning the unborn, while embracing the death penalty, something the Catholic Church itself opposes.

I have a lot of dear brothers and sisters in my home church who would give you the proverbial shirts off their backs and drop everything to help a neighbor in need.  We don’t always agree on politics, but we agree on the things that count. There are a few in my church who are also judgmental and arrogant as all hell, but they tend to be a minority.

Beyond my home church, though, you see a religion taken over by powerful people whose only interest is in getting obedience from the masses. They may do some good things, raising money for charity for example, but then they do the worst of the worst: They point to certain segments of society and telling their followers that it’s OK to look down on them as some subhuman blob of sin incarnate.

Gays.

Immigrants.

Women.

The poor.

Liberals.

In short, the leaders of the Religious Right tell us anyone who isn’t just like them are bad.

There’s this notion that to be a “true” Christian, you have to be a Republican and frown upon government programs. The welfare of the poorest among us must be taken care of by charitable organizations alone. To allow for government assistance is to support government control of every facet of our public and personal lives. In other words, being a Democrat means you support a socialist regime that allows intrinsic evils like abortion. You also don’t support freedom of religion.

What a bunch of rubbish.

I know a lot of conservatives and liberals, and they tend to feel the way I do on the following:

  • Abortion is never a good thing. Those who support the status quo (Roe v. Wade) aren’t for killing babies and never were. They don’t see it as an acceptable form of birth control. They simply want women to have a choice when they’ve been raped or their health is in mortal danger because of a problem with the pregnancy. I’ve never met someone who chose abortion upon learning their child might have serious developmental issues. They’ve brought those children into the world and have loved them as parents should love their children. They also tend to vote for president based on all of the candidate’s platform, not just one plank. To vote for a candidate on abortion alone is considered ridiculous, especially considering that four of the last six presidents have been staunch pro-lifers. They tried to put like-minded justices on the Supreme Court when the opportunity came to them, and yet Roe v. Wade has not been overturned.
  • Being gay is not a disease. Nor is it a lifestyle choice someone casually decides to make one day. I have gay family members and love them as much as the heterosexual family members. All I ask is that they be good people, live life to the fullest and pay their taxes like the rest of us. Every gay person I know meets all the criteria.
  • Government should leave us alone, for the most part. I don’t want to live under a socialist system, certainly not the variety we saw in the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. I want the government to be there when it counts: during a natural disaster or economic crisis in which millions need a helping hand through the bad times until they can get back on their feet. That 47 percent Mitt Romney talked about? I’ve never met them. Most of the people I know, regardless of party, work almost to excess to keep themselves and families afloat. They don’t want the government to build it for them, but they wouldn’t mind a little help along the way on things like taxes and zoning laws.

I’m tired of right-wing extremists controlling my religion. I know Jesus. He’s with me through every success and failure, never quitting me. He looks nothing like the finger pointing, arrogant people I see everywhere now.

I’m not leaving the Catholic faith over it or rejecting the sacraments. I love and need those. But I can make it known that I’m not going to follow the intolerant herd. So, from here on out, I’m considering myself a member of the Religious Left.

God bless you.

Man with flag and bible

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The Election’s Over. Now What?

I’ve been very much out of it since Tuesday morning, when I woke up to a fever, chills, a blistering headache and exhaustion. It was so bad that I wasn’t able to sit up long enough to email my boss until nearly 1 p.m. Yesterday was better, though I couldn’t do much more than lie on the couch.

I’m trying to get back into my writing groove this morning, but it’s not going well. I have a lot of opinions about things I’ve seen on the news, but I don’t have the energy to construct my arguments with the appropriate rigor.

So I’ll just make a few quick observations and then engage myself in an attempt to get some paying work done.

Mood music:

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  • David Petraeus’ extramarital affair. The headlines are full of this one. The former CIA director and revered general made the mistake many powerful people make when too many people tell them their poop doesn’t stink: He cheated on his wife. I feel badly for his family and hope they can move forward. I hope people don’t forget the good he did in breaking the Iraqi insurgency so that we could end the war. I also hope my more conservative friends stop subscribing to the bullshit notion that the timing of his resignation was meant to scuttle his testimony regarding the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. People are trying too hard to find a conspiracy where none exists.
  • Glenn Beck’s “God really sucks” statement. Conservative commentator Glenn Beck reacted to Obama’s re-election with this incoherent statement:

    Man, sometimes God really sucks. I got up yesterday at 3:00 in the morning and I knew. And I couldn’t sleep and I started to say my prayers and I got up and kneeled down by the edge of my bed and I knew that — or I suspected that my mind’s not God’s mind, and the peace and the comfort that he had given me and so many of my friends was not about an election. God’s about a bigger picture than an election or a candidate. God is about the freedom of mankind. God is about the Constitution, which is a divinely inspired.

    I agree that God is bigger than an election or a candidate, that He’s about freedom of mankind. But Beck says that after questioning God’s will. I’ve despised his whiny tirades ever since his show on CNN Headline News. I’d be happier if he’d just go away now.

  • Secession petitions now filed for all 50 states. North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Florida each had more than 25,000 signatures for secession from the union, the threshold needed to trigger an official response from the Obama administration. A lot of people are calling this a movement. It’s not. What you’re seeing is a stunt that repeats itself every four to eight years, especially when a lot of people are unhappy with a presidential election result. Move along, now. There’s nothing to see here.

I sometimes imagine the conversations I’d be having with my friend Sean Marley over this stuff had he not passed on 16 years ago.

Chances are that he’d disagree with everything I just wrote here. He always loved a good conspiracy theory, especially those that fit his libertarian ideals. I miss those arguments. Sometimes.

Petraeus Resigns

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Bill Maher: Bomb Thrower from the Left

We hear a lot about conservative pundits and how their rhetoric often crosses the lines of decency and civility. I made an example of Ann Coulter a couple days ago to illustrate the point. But there are also plenty of bomb throwers on the left who paint large segments of the population with the same big brush they use to attack individuals who may deserve it. Take Bill Maher, for example.

Maher is a comedian and political commentator. His stock-in-trade has always been to bait people with over-the-top insults. That’s what Politically Incorrect was all about. As Coulter does against liberals, Maher makes a lot of valid observations about conservative stupidity but ruins it by resorting to hate talk and rhetoric that borders on racist.

Mychal Denzel Smith, a writer, social commentator and mental health advocate, offers an example in an NPR article, “The Root: Bill Maher’s Off-Color Jokes Go Too Far“:

Lately he has come to depend on this style of joke to bring home laughs in a way that distracts from the insightful sociopolitical commentary he has to offer. Moreover, he has forgotten the first rule of comedy: Be funny. It simply wasn’t funny when Maher suggested that he wanted President Obama to act like a “real black president” in his handling of the BP oil spill last summer by flashing a gun in the face of its CEO and asking, “We got a motherf – – – ing problem here?!”

Maher is no racist. But, as I wrote in another post a few months ago, the language you use still says something about the kind of person you are.

That aside, what really burns me up about Maher these days is his attack on religion. I’ve written plenty about the crazies who attach themselves to religion and distort reality for their own gain, usually burying the truthful, illuminating aspects of faith beneath the rubble of hooey dumped on us by a minority of nuts like evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, both of whom suggested 9/11 was God’s punishment upon society for homosexuality, feminism, paganism and groups like the ACLU.

With comments like that and their constant penchant for blaming everything bad in this world on homosexuals, liberals and judges who don’t share their worldview, Robertson, Falwell and other like-minded souls are legitimate targets for someone like Maher. But it’s not enough for Maher to go after the individuals who give conservatism a bad name. He denounces all religion and everyone who believes in it. In his book, if you have faith, you’re delusional. He made a whole movie on the subject, Religulous.

As someone who practices Catholicism, I find that insulting.

I’m the first to admit there are a lot of buffoons in the Catholic Church, as evidenced by “Screw You, Cardinal Egan” and “A Rebellious Catholic’s Analysis of Rick Santorum.” But as I’ve said many times before, I believe in Jesus Christ and the Sacriments of the Catholic Church. People often lose their faith because they spend too much time getting angry with church officials and not enough time on the main point of their faith. I also reject the idea that God will send you to Hell because you’re gay, liberal or a devotee of some other religion.

Maher’s worldview is that if you have faith, you’re a racist, conservative, homophobic sheep.

I’ve heard that despite their political and religious differences, Maher and Coulter are actually good friends. Given their tactics, I’m not surprised.

Bill Maher

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Ann Coulter and the Politics of Hate

Of all the political commentators out there, I think Ann Coulter and her politics of hate best illustrate why I’ve come to hate politics.

I don’t dislike Coulter because she’s conservative. There are many conservative voices out there that I admire. I dislike her because everything that comes from her mouth is coated in vitriol. One example that has always stood out is this interview she did with self-proclaimed right-wing blogger John Hawkins. Some could argue that Coulter and Hawkins were just having a lighthearted discussion that was meant as humor. But when she suggests it would have been fine for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to walk into the New York Times building and blow up all the reporters and editors, I have trouble seeing what’s funny:

John Hawkins: You’ve caught a lot of heat for a couple of quotes you made. In your column three days after 9/11, you said, “We know who the homicidal maniacs are.They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” You also said in an interview with the New York Observer, “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.” Do you stand by those quotes or do you think that perhaps you should have phrased them differently?

Ann Coulter: Ozzy Osbourne has his bats, and I have that darn “convert them to Christianity” quote. (Thank you for giving the full quote. I have the touch, don’t I?) Some may not like what I said, but I’m still waiting to hear a better suggestion.

RE: McVeigh quote. Of course I regret it. I should have added, “after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.”

In her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism, she has this to say about some of the 9/11 widows:

These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them. … I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much. …

The Democrat ratpack gals endorsed John Kerry for president … cutting campaign commercials. … How do we know their husbands weren’t planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they’d better hurry up and appear in Playboy.

Her basic message is always that people with liberal views are godless and unpatriotic. Looking at it from my own corner of the universe, I know many liberal-leaning people who go to Church every Sunday and proudly fly the American flag from their homes. I also know a lot of conservatives who think religion is a bunch of hooey and don’t show much patriotism.

It’s a shame Coulter has to use hateful and derogatory rhetoric the way she does, because I do think there’s a genuine conservative intellectual buried in there.

I generally agree with her when she says liberals were wrong to think Ronald Reagan crazy for ditching détente and seeking to run the Soviet Union into the ground. In hindsight, we can see that Reagan forced the Soviets into a military spending game they couldn’t win, and they got buried beneath the rubble of an economy that rotted from the inside out because of their rigid communist system.

I also think it’s daft to ban all forms of religious expression from public schools. I think kids should be learning about all religions. When they decide what to believe in adulthood, they have some real reference points to draw from. Of course, Coulter would not approve of including Muslims in that mix because, as she has said, all terrorists are Muslims.

Some of you will read this and think I’m being one-sided, but the fact is that I don’t think Coulter represents everything wrong with the Republican party. I think she represents everything wrong with the political discourse in general.

In a future post, I’ll write about a liberal commentator who poisons the political well as the conservative Coulter does, because unlike FOX News — and MSNBC and CNN, for that matter — I believe in doing things the fair and balanced way.

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America’s Struggle Through Puberty

In yesterday’s post, “It’s the End of American Dominance and I Feel Fine,” I suggested that it’s no big deal if America is no longer number one. But if it’s no longer the top dog, what is it? America is like a confused, emotionally exhausted child trying to find itself.

Mood music:

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My friend Dave Marcus offered this reaction to yesterday’s post:

Not so sure I fully agree with the tone. I think its more that America shows signs that it needs to evolve and neither party wants to as it would mean an end to their bureaucratic hold.

That’s certainly true. If you compare America’s age to that of many other countries in the civilized world, it’s still a child. The Democrats and Republicans are a couple of drunk parents in the middle of a bitter divorce, grabbing the child by each arm and pulling the limbs from the sockets. And it’s been that way for a long time.

Now that child has hit puberty, and the shit is hitting the fan.

Like any tortured kid, America is trying to be what both parents want it to be: the winner; the one who always brings the awards home and walks away from schoolyard fights unscathed. But the parents are clinging to old, unrealistic ideas the child can never live up to. 

The old ideas of prosperity are obsolete. An increasing number of us no longer live in a world where you go to an office or factory for eight hours a day, five days a week, then leave the work behind. We’re always checking email on our smartphones and the Internet allows us to work pretty much wherever we want. Work and personal time have been woven together. In this new environment, we have to re-evaluate what it means to successfully compete and prosper while also enjoying our friends, families and personal pursuits.

And so we have a country in economic turmoil and divisiveness coated in hateful rhetoric. In a sense, the child realized it can never live up to Mom and Dad’s expectations and decided to kill the pain with a bottle and a handful of pills.

Our country needs to find itself.

Finding ourselves is not about trying to be number one. It’s about trying to be better than we are.

America can still be a winner. It will never lose its ability to compete, innovate and lead. I’m proud to call myself an American, and I cherish our history. But we can’t stay atop the heap forever. We can only get so big before the load gets too heavy to sustain. The Roman Empire couldn’t do it. Neither could the British Empire. The empires are gone, but the cultures that sprung from them are as prosperous and vibrant as ever.

I know plenty of Brits who are proud of where they’re from, and it has nothing to do with being the richest and most powerful country, which they’re not. I know some folks from Ireland who are pretty happy to live where they live and are proud as hell of their rich heritage. By economic, military and population standards, Ireland is not number one. Not even close.

So what?

The difference between those countries and America is that they have the wisdom that comes with age. They matured long ago. When you get older, you realize some of the stuff you found important as a kid wasn’t so important after all.

America will grow up sooner or later. It will stop measuring its greatness by the size of its wallet and the number of missiles it has in the basement. Right now it doesn’t know quite what to do because the careers of old are gone and not coming back. It has to evolve, as my friend Dave said, and that means shifting expectations.

Adjusting expectations doesn’t mean settling for less than an excellent existence. It may mean redefining our idea of what an excellent existence is and adjusting to the idea that America can’t go back to the way life used to be. The dream of a house with a white picket fence and two cars paid for by Dad’s 9-to-5 office job isn’t realistic anymore. Mom has to work now, too, and there’s no gold watch for either of them after 45 years of service. They’re lucky if they stay at one job 5 or 10 years.

That doesn’t mean we can’t have it good. It just means we have to find new ways to get there.

Flag on Boat

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It’s the End of American Dominance, and I Feel Fine

America is a nation in economic decline. But that reality isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

My friend Larry Walsh said on Facebook yesterday:

What neither Obama or Romney is telling us is the world we’ve known for the past 70 years is over and not coming back. Both parties are trying to control the decline of the U.S. standard of living long enough to avoid having to take responsibility. Pathetic.

Mood music:

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It’s an interesting statement that has some truth to it. Most people already know the era of American economic domination is over, but we’re addicted to the idea that we’re number one. And like good addicts, we’re masters of denial.

When I was a kid, I was full of insecurities. Insecurity over my parent’s divorce, my brother’s death, my illnesses and my lack of popularity at school. But I always took some comfort in the fact that no matter how shitty life could be, I was still an American. Therefore, I was still a higher form of life than someone in my predicament who was living in France, Mexico, Saudi Arabia or some war-torn land like Afghanistan.

Back then we Americans felt pretty good about ourselves, because Ronald Reagan told us we should. I always thought that was Reagan’s best quality — lifting our sense of self-worth and destiny, no matter how messy our personal lives were. Fast-forward 30 years and all the folks who idolize the ghost of Reagan like a god are  grousing that President Obama is presiding over the decline of America. But the truth is that America’s slide started long before Obama took office.

That’s right: America is sliding from the pedestal is sat upon since the end of World War II. The oil crisis and inflation of the 1970s couldn’t knock it over. So what gives?

I have my theories, which may or may not be accurate. I think, as Larry suggested, that we’ve been clinging to the false notion that we can restore America to its past glory. But I don’t think it’s that America has lost its ability to compete and shine. It’s simply the fact that technology has made the world a smaller place and the Internet has empowered people from around the world in unprecedented ways. You could say it’s leveled the global playing field.

That may mean that we don’t get to be number one anymore. But so what?

Personally, I’m happier in the face of our national decline. I have my shit together in ways I could only dream of in the 1980s. I have family and friends I adore. I see people conducting themselves with valor in the face of adversity every day. And nationality has nothing to do with it. It’s about personal will, heart and faith.

I see fellow Americans shining at everyday life. And I see friends from around the world doing the same.

Are we Americans going to have to work harder for our slice of the pie in the years to come? Perhaps. But, really now, have we ever gotten anywhere without busting our balls every day? If you’re independently wealthy maybe you have. But most people I know have never had it easy.

Larry’s right: The world we’ve known for 70 years is gone and isn’t coming back. Presidential candidates will never tell you that because their profession is to tell you exactly what you want to hear. So it’s up to us to face reality and get over it.

Fuck being the number-one nation on Earth. Let’s focus on being better human beings regardless of nationality.

I’ve never been much of a Billy Joel fan. But he once sang a lyric that’s always resonated with me: “The good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow’s not as bad as it seems.”

Ain’t that the truth?

US Flaf