Americans down on America?

Most Americans live in a bubble and have not idea what the real world is like. It's almost unthinkable, that even with the problems we have here, how easy we have it compared to the rest of the world.

I chose the dream is dying, but in reality, I believe we are being robbed of the dream. Behind this decline in patriotism, confidence, and identity crisis, is our own government.

It is difficult to be confident about your country when it seems the powers that be are doing everything to discourage people. This can also lead to a decline in patriotism. I love our country and it's citizens, but our government is making life somewhere else more appealing.

Everyday, it seems like our freedoms are in jeopardy of being stripped. Little by little our own government is eating away at our liberties, and they are doing this under the guise of what is best for us and national security. I propose that if our government doesn't think we are capable of knowing what is best for ourselves, and that they have to rob of us of constitutional freedoms to protect us, then we are no longer a free nation.

I am not saying we are this way yet, but in five or ten years we may very well be.

Unfortunately as I have watched over the course of the last 20 years, we as a nation are slowly descending into an abyss that we may not be able to pull ourselves out of. Politically we have become so divided that neither side, left or right, seems to want to compromise for the good of the whole and we are left with the mess that we currently have. Somewhere along the way we lost the unity that we as a nation felt following 9/11 where it didn't matter if you were a Republican, a Democrat, conservative or liberal, we were one nation and we acted as one. Those on the left will (continuously) blame Bush-43 for our nation being where it is at financially today because of some of the lifting of certain restrictions on Wall Street and the financial industry, but they forget that a Democratic congress pushed through and passed legislation designed to put more people in houses that they couldn't afford to begin with that led to many of the underhanded practices that led to the housing collapse. Those on the right, blame the current occupant of the White House for the failures of foreign policy and immigration, but also forget that the policies of former occupants had a hand in the world looking as it does now because they have failed to out forth any solid plan to stop or curtail illegal immigration since the '80s and our veering into Iraq is partially responsible for the situation at hand today. Until we get a president that is willing to work with the opposition parties in charge of the Congress and vice-versa, we are looking at the decline of the United States as a power on the world stage. In some ways this may not be a bad thing, we shouldn't be the only country that everyone turns to fix their messes in their own backyards, and we shouldn't be the only country that continuously provides billions of dollars to assist and aid others, and then turn around and get told we do not do enough. We need to clean-up our own messes here, get back on solid footing economically and socially as a country and then play a smaller role on the world stage. We CAN be as great as we were, but first we must fix ourselves and then worry about what we can do for others in the world. Just the views of an "older" fart from the sidelines now.....