It took a heart of stone to watch PBS' News Hour last night without breaking into tears over America in ruins-- a collapsing economy with no end in sight, the falling-apart of charity and culture in Seattle, poor people without medical care in New Mexico and, to cap it off, a critique of how helpless the presidential candidates are to do anything meaningful about it.
How did we get to be living in Haiti? Political explanations are not enough. As careless and clueless as Washington leaders may be, there has to be more involved here--some moral failure by all of us to feel and act responsibly in this new century of the national id run wild.
Tonight, the cable pundits will be back knowingly huffing and puffing from their perches of moral superiority, but self-congratulation is a bizarre response to our condition.
As a wise man once said, we may be too old to cry but it hurts too much to laugh.
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