Lost amid the debate over health care, the two wars, the financial meltdown, and whether or not we're paying less taxes under Obama than under Bush (I suspect this is correct, but I don't think it's the whole truth), I think we've missed something fundamental.
To wit: Grover Norquist has already won. You remember him, the guy who said he wanted to shrink government to the point where he could "drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub".
I believe that, right now, we are seeing what might be called...The Great Unraveling. I have lived in a few different places over the past year, and from what I can tell, every level of government--state, regional, local, and neighborhood--is pushing its problems down to the next one down. Furloughs. Cuts to basic services. Increases in fees and fines. Petty vindictive witch hunts.
So there you go. We have a smart, Democratic President in the White House and perhaps all-too-brief majorities in both houses. And yet we have governors, mayors, county executives and town supervisors enacting brutal budget austerity measures that are making peoples' lives miserable.
The sad truth is that unless there's a serious turnaround in how people think about the role of government--and I don't just mean the Tea Partiers here--we're in a time machine and the next stop is the nineteenth century. But probably a little worse.
Do you remember the nineteenth century? No? Me neither, I was born in 1974. Guess I'm going to need to pick up some Charles Dickens and read about debtor prisons and consumption.
Don't kid yourself. It's getting really, really bad.
Please be aware that I do think that our problems are solvable. However, I don't think that ignoring them or denying their gravity will make them go away.