I find I can tell a great deal about a person and the political lens they view the world through by simply asking if they think that things have "gotten worse in America" since the 60s.
Now many people will say yes, but when you ask why things have "gotten worse" the real differences start to come out.
I'm in a hyper-minority on this question, in that I think things, overall, have gotten much better in this nation since the 60s. Really think about it! They have! But, most people do not say this.
I'm much happier to live today than in that stultified cultural environment. And for all of the missteps and and tragedies that have occurred I think we are a better America now, today. I don't suffer nostalgia. Most people are dreaming of a past that never existed or they are exactly those people that made the past a bad place to live for most of us in first place.
Yet many people feel those very same victories are instead "weakening" a "once great" nation. That we are failing to assimilate our immigrants and failing to white-wash away black culture and gay culture and counter cultures. That we are failing to keep things and people who are treated like things in their place.
When, instead we have woven all of these things and ideas and people in to the American fabric and the star spangled banner is now an iridescent rainbow feminist black-power flag and the colors have all run together the egg can't be unscrambled we're all so hopeless mixed up with each other that there isn't a way to turn back and bring back those old comforting repugnant divisions.
And I am so very very sorry for those who need that kind of comfort. They must feel very angry.
And the arguments that have paralyzed our government have not very much to do with health care at all but everything with who gets to be in charge... and when you look at it in that way these feel like very dark times.
But, I think the times in our near future will be very bright in comparison.
Death scenes can be quite messy and something very ugly and large is dying. And it will leave a great a rotting corpse. But, the bodies of the dead have always nourished the soil. Maybe if we get past this this country can flourish at last.