After watching the caucus debates, I decided that we are in the "est" decades of America--one after another, the candidates from both sides kept reassuring who ever would listen that we are the biggest, the strongest, richest, smartest, the bravest, freeist, mightyist nation in the world, over and over again. And when on the heels of this triumphalism, some Republican candidates denied that any other country in the world had any reason to hate us, I had to laugh. Do we never hear our own words, do we never catch the steely glint of cause and effect, but mostly do we ever think deeper then deceiving platitudes of self congratulations.
I did rise to hope listening to Obama's victory speech; if the young and the old and the others vote in the Democrats, throwing off political despair, then oh gods, let the victors stand by their words -because the fall from promised grace will be too great, the bait and switch game cut too deeply into the psyches of the young for even the greatist, mightyist, richest democracy to survive.