Darkest before the dawn

In his latest column "Debt Woes: Could America Go the Way of Greece?"), Fareed Zakaria laments America's difficulty in resolving its economic conundrum. But allow me to lift some of his words out of that context because they speak to some greater truths about our current body politic: "The great truth facing the U.S. is not that we lack solutions to our problems but that our political system seems unable to do anything. ... the two parties seem stuck in adolescent fantasies. ... But as you watch the dangerous game of chicken in Washington, it is easy to conclude that the U.S. has lost a serious governing class and has become a place where ideology and talk-radio rhetoric have replaced the business of governance." I suspect America will ultimately surmount her troubles. We always have. But that doesn't mean it won't be messy or even ugly. That is the price of democracy in this 11th year of the 3rd millennium, Anno Domini.