Taking our country back

If I wasn't so sick that I'm ready to fling myself off this mortal coil rather than live another minute feeling this horrible, I might have written something like this. Well, actually, that's not true. I'll never be one tenth the writer as Charles P. Pierce. But he speaks of the same sort of thoughts that keep me up at night in his year's end reflections. This is just the closer.

It is a dead-level time for us as a people. There are now 146 million Americans who are ranked as "low-income" or "poor." Somebody really should do something about that. How we treat them in our politics is going to be the ultimate test of our moral credibility as a nation. Do we treat this situation as the national disgrace that it is, and commit ourselves as a nation to eliminating it? Or do we turn away from them, blame them for the malaise we feel in our lives, and drink deeply again from the supply-side, trickle-down snake oil? Do we look at the president — a Democratic president — and scream that this is no longer tolerable to us as a people? Or do we nod sagely and deplore the lack of civility and bipartisan cooperation in our government and hope that cooler heads will prevail, that the great national purpose of our age is to deprive ourselves further of what was supposed to be the promise of the country in the vague and futile hope that somehow, somewhere, things will get better down the line?

The moral act is to scream.

If you read nothing else this weekend. Read this in its entirety.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]