Post-partisan, Post-racial, Post-cereal

from Bob Herbert's editorial, NYT today

However you want to define the American dream, there is not much of it that’s left anymore. We’re in denial about the extent of the rot in the system, and the effort that would be required to turn things around. The human suffering in the years required to recover from the recession will continue to be immense. And that suffering will only be made worse if the nation embarks on a misguided crash program of deficit reduction that in the short term will undermine any recovery, and in the long term will make true deficit reduction that much harder to achieve.

We have neither the will nor the common sense to either raise taxes to pay for the wars, or stop fighting them. We’ve become a hapless, can’t-do society, and it’s, frankly, embarrassing. Public figures talk endlessly about “transformative changes” in public education, but the years go by and we see no such thing. Politicians across the spectrum insist that they are all about job creation while the employment situation in the real world remains beyond pathetic.

All we are good at is bulldozing money to the very wealthy. No wonder the country is in such a deep slide.