Another partial solution would be to understand that our country has become too large to continue as a single nation. We should break the country into at least 6 regional nations in a loose federation of democracies. We might want to eliminate our huge standing armies to save a few trillion dollars. We won’t do that ourselves, though. Police states never surrender power by choice. We will need to be defeated in war by the rest of the world so that they can determine how we will continue into the rest of the 21st century. Millions dead, but the only other option I see is the effect of the oceans rising 10′ and the weather becoming violent, erratic and unpredictable. This would demonstrate that our current form of government is useless to protect us from our own greed and ignorance. Only smaller, more regional forces would have the motivation and experience to mitigate the new environmental impact. This is borne out by the failure of the current government to do anything to recover New Orleans, to maintain an infrastructure, and it’s active participation in a world wide holy war against a philosophy. “Too big to exist” was true for dinosaurs, is true for financial institutions, and appears to be true for nations.

As for the comments of my fellow Americans: tell it to the Indians. Haven’t you read Howard Zinn’s _A People’s History of the United States_ by now? You write as if we innocently found this continent, its resources, and the power they bestow, under our freakin’ pillows one morning in John Winthrop’s shining “city upon a hill.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2009/07/pilger-obama-america-world

*The adventure of the hero, as defined by Joseph Campbell in his classic _The Hero with a Thousand Faces_ (p. 245 in the 3rd printing, Arkana).

When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero’s sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again—if the powers have remained unfriendly to him— his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom).

The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection).

The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir).

In other news, even if all the Guantanamo detainees WERE guilty (which they aren’t obviously, but for the sake of argument), Guantanamo is still SERIOUSLY ***** up and is a huge stain on America. But so many people pointed and laughed at any of our few politicians who said these things during the Bush administration. Meh.