Sun Setting on America?

The National Intelligence Council says the sun is setting on the American century.

We can blame the Chimp-In -Chief for his flinging around a good steaming part of the problem. I more completely blame his rapidly shrinking kleptocratic political faction, who has regarded American citizens as nothing more than selfish, fearful, nativist, consumers, useful to wealth, and reinforced this at every turn in policy and the political culture for decades.

The question for me is whether the Obama election provides an opportunity to rebuild American political culture- in particular, rebuild the connection of citizen and community, focused on something beyond material prosperity. Can Obama expand on his ability to campaign, building powerful mass movements, into rolling support for a broad range of critical progressive policy iniatives?

Bush's endless failures have turned every issue into must-dos. Including pirates!

A desire to act among each of us grows out of uncertainty. This is a grand opportunity.

Obama's ability to sincerely inspire Americans to want to act socially is impressive and needed, so keeping up the campaign's tremendous outreach ability to build broad political momentum will, I believe, be the successful strategy. Democrats for far too long kept offering somewhat sensible public policy and wondered why no one jumped on board. They let an American political culture that can drive the will to good social policy evaporate, and failed to create a new one.

Obama has begun to put together a refurbished, democratic American culture with a will to act socially, a way to collect individual desires into a broad movement.

This is what conservatives sought to destroy at every turn. It is at the heart of the "culture wars," and we kept losing because the right was ingenious at finding points that divided Americans from each other- from Art to abortion, or for example, loggers vs. enviromentalists rather than loggers vs. logging companies. It was bogus and evil, of course, and so effective that when the Left degenerated into self-focused interest groups, the right capitalized, and the reward is their success at dividing and weakening America.

Rebuild socially-minded, inventive, democratic America, irrespective of ideology, and it feeds everything we need to do as a nation. We may regain our world leadership, and with genuine pride.