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Posted By: barrysloate

Okay- this thread has calmed down for the night so allow me to summarize my feelings: We've all had an opportunity to express our views, and clearly many of us have very strong opinions about the state of the world. But what I find most disheartening is just how split this nation is, and how deeply divided we are in our thinking. Net54 is just a microcosm of what is happening around us. You would think that 9/11 would have rallied this country together but it has done just the opposite; in fact, if we weren't a civilized nation, I am not certain we couldn't be on the brink of a civil war here. And I have no choice but to put the responsibility for this on our failed leadership. Whether you are Republican or Democrat, privileged or disenfranchised, people in ever greater numbers are becoming totally fed up with the people at the top. We have a president who has the look of someone who is neither qualified for the job nor even interested in having it, one who is clueless about diplomacy and has created enemies in nearly every corner of the globe. We have a war that we should have never been in that will probably go on for years to come, yet we have almost no tangible moral outrage. Why? Because it is somebody else's son who is being killed or maimed. If the draft were ever reinstated, you could be sure that no privileged family would want their son to fight and we would see an end to the war in short order. We've created a breeding ground for terrorists, and they are rampaging through Iraq with impunity. We've destroyed that country and the rest of the Middle East is likely to follow. The Right likes to brag about all the wonderful tax cuts we've gotten but I don't feel any richer. However, I can say with confidence there are more billionaires, and if there is anything America needs right now is more billionaires. I'm not sure anybody can save this country right now, but I do feel passionate that the current leadership needs to get their sorry asses out of office. We've been betrayed by them and the country is divided like never before. And I for one have never felt more pessimistic about the future.