2008 already?

Time seems to speed up the older you get. When you're a kid, you have eons of days before you. When you get older, you wonder where the time went.

This last eight years have been so depressing, in terms of the larger picture in politics. The Bush team has degraded America to a shambles of what was good and great. The Constitution has been shat upon, personal liberties have been curtailed, and not towards a common good. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and our oil dependency is hastening the end of the globe as we know it.

Frankly, I don't care who gets into the White House next January. I only care that the short-sighted, greedy, hypocritical assholes who have been in power the last eight years are gone and we never hear from them again, unless it is in the context of criminal charges.

As happens with all presidents, at least since Truman, who was in power when I was born, each one of them has looked decades older from the stresses of running, or being run to run the country when they leave office. I find it ironic that Bush plans to spend his retirement at his compound in Crawford, where he has all the latest in green technology, and can survive in any catatastrophe in which the "grid" is compromised. So why the hell didn't he afford the rest of America the technology which he knows is optimum?

It blows me away that there are real human beings for whom material possessions and amassing of money means more than human lives. It's like a rot, no better than the pitiful, power-hungry third-world despots that use people as cannon fodder, or as disposable servitors to accumulate more and more wealth. What the heck are they going to do with it? It's such a disgraceful waste.

Which brings me to the issues of "entitlement," fear of aging, the desire to be "better than," the willingness to abandon all morality to attain an unreal state of something, success? Power? Adulation? Is it worth the trashing of basic values to look two years younger than your neighbor? To drive a car that costs more to procure, maintain, and gas up? To snag a heartless, boring job?

We have become a nation of mini-bullies. The Bully in Chief is simply one symptom of what has gone terribly awry in national integrity. This is way beyond politics. This is a sad side-tracking of the human condition. The real shame is that it doesn't have to be this way. We've got too many brilliant minds, way too much of the world's wealth, and certainly too much democratic freedom to not be able to come up with real answers and action. There is no excuse for what we have become. We could take care of our planet, our various populations, and diseases if we just decide to do it. We have access to all the resources on the planet, most notably the mental capacity to solve the largest of the world's problems.

Why are we taking the low road? Have we sunk to the level of the ancient barbaric civilizations? Are we living out the predictions of old scientific experiments that show that when an environment becomes over-populated, the inhabitants become psychotic and homicidal? We have the resources to take care of overpopulation--this is a sociological, not a moral issue. As is the issue of AIDS.

Where does this all stop? Is it simply a question of relinquishing our individual responsibility? What happened to that wonderful rebellious energy from the 60's and 70's? Complacency? How could we have gotten ourselves into this mess?

What can we do as responsible adults to turn this stupid train around and work towards the good? We have the means to communicate on a massively inclusive level. What are our candidates willing to put on the line to turn America around? Which one is most capable of doing that? Are any of them capable? Is that where the responsibility lies? Who can talk to the Supreme Court? Who can convince Congress? Who can lead the way? Anyone this particular election period? I'm not convinced yet.