Can you imagine if a dozen intelligent people would express a similar outlook in their own words, and each of them had two friends who would, and they had two friends and,  …well, …could it birth an influential paradigm of legitimate liberal American advocate-activists? ( ...Jeez, again I skew.) 

…Anyway, (it's a good read IMHO) 

 allow me to repost it in its entirety (and issue a restraining order on myself).

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Bad Dreams, Accidents, and Unrestrained Desire –

Dispatches from the American Landscape

by Reg

Someone asked me the other day "How did this country get so screwed up?" and I know that's a question that many people ask every day. It's a question that could mean many different things depending upon who might be doing the asking. Much of the time when I hear that question these days I want to refer people to the Randy Newman song "A Few Words in Defense of My Country" because let's face it, America is a bad word right now. Even our president is going around apologizing to anybody that will listen and we seem to be a country down on our luck and hat in hand.

This is a young nation and in its short history the United States has weathered bad times before, generally because we forged onwards and upwards (literally!) and Americans as a people would band together to solve our problems. This is where I think we have come to a rather serious crossroads, we are no longer a nation united by common goals, hopes, dreams, desires, nor do we agree on what is the "greater good" we should be working towards. Sure, we have many problems to address, the economy, the environment, healthcare, working for peace in a world gripped by terror of our own making, but the fact is we will have a hard time addressing these concerns if we can't come together as a nation again. We seem to have a great deal of concern about repairing our reputation abroad right now, and sure there is good reason for that, but we need to fix our reputation here at home and come to some sort of understanding about what this country is and should be.

One of mankind's oldest enemies has us by the throat and it's an enemy we all know quite well, fear. Fear has always been with us and over the course of time we have come to recognize its value and usefulness. Religious leaders, politicians, terrorists, psychiatrists, military leaders, and talk show hosts all know how fear can be utilized as a powerful motivational tool. We have, of course, improved our ability to deploy our "fear weapon" using technology and in doing so have managed to divide this nation into more and more segments…to borrow from Anthony Burgess in a rather ham-fisted manner, we are a Clockwork Orange nation.

Of course what Burgess meant by a Clockwork Orange was a human being that had the lovely appearance of this beautiful, colorful, wondrous, natural, wild, juice filled, creation but underneath the lovely flesh that person was a programmed machine. This definition still applies I think because one thing I think we lack these days is "juice" and by "juice" I mean that potent elixir that makes us vibrant, creative, free thinking, rugged, knowledge seeking human beings. As we all know an orange is divided into segments and if these segments are also "clockwork" - as in preprogrammed self contained entities appearing as part of the whole but in reality existing as an easily defined (removed) segment – then the "Clockwork Orange" idea could be expanded to mean a nation easily divided into "programmed segments" looking only on its surface to be a beautiful whole.

Is this not what we have become?

Red States, Blue States, nobody is just an "American" anymore, they are an Irish American, African American, Native American, Jewish American, Catholic American, Gay American, Straight American, Underprivileged American, Wealthy American, White American, Black American, Right Wing American, Left Wing American, Liberal American, Conservative American, Sick American, Healthy American, Guilty American, Victim American…and the one thing that always comes last is "American."

You are always more of whatever the word is that comes before "American" and you are always more inclined to celebrate being whatever that first word is than being just plain old lousy American. Why? Simple, because being American just does not have any status anymore and it pretty much implies you are about as interesting as a jar of mayonnaise…and these days that mayonnaise has been left out in the hot summer sun, has gone bad, is swimming with maggots and stinks to the high heavens.

Nobody wants to be just American anymore it seems and that was not always the case. People who came to this country did not want to be known as a "Fill in the blank" American…they just wanted to be known as American…period! Why? Simple, because we were once the land of hopes, dreams, freedom, liberty, justice, and never ending possibilities. You could come to America and reinvent yourself as whatever you wanted to be and as that old saying goes "be all you could be!"

Sure, America was built on bloodshed, slavery, raping the land, greed and destroying its native culture. That's really not an "American" thing though we got that from our European ancestors. Let's face it, this is a flaw of being human, not a flaw of being American. Humans are murderous, raping, pillagers that destroy to build and build to destroy. Yeah, George W. Bush was a blundering, murderous, vile, highly destructive moron but he was not the first of his kind and if you can name a culture that has not had a history with this sort of behavior I'll be impressed as all hell and I'm buying the drinks at the bar!

So, despite the bad dreams I keep having and that I find it interesting what some folks will call an accident, I still believe we are a nation of great possibility and I know for a fact we cannot contain or restrain our desires…I'm kinda hoping we can sort of aim them in a better direction though.

We are a young nation and a strange but often wonderful experiment in democracy and we have been some serious fuck-ups of late but give us a chance and we might surprise you.

Or we might just make a bunch of youtube videos where we smash shit with a baseball bat and start World War 3.

That's the beauty of life I guess…