SHUT UP ALREADY!

The One is coming. And I am already tired of it, because it just hasn't let up.

Maybe, just maybe, after this week we can finally get away from fawning and get on with life. You're all so needlessly excited. Even Peggy Noonan can't stop gushing. Seriously, everyone acts like we were never going to have a black President. You're all so astonished at and proud of this "achievement." What a lack of faith in humanity that shows, and yet somehow I am the cynical one. I also find it horribly ironic that so many who scream about Mr. Bush's "excesses" and "expansion of Presidential power" are just about ready to make Mr. Obama the American emperor.

It's time for all you little kids to wake up. Your pathetic fawning and misplaced hopes belie the REAL problem: America is dead. We are fat, complacent dorks with no willpower, no endurance, no common identity, no shared values. We are a thousand tiny islands pretending to live in harmony, but we can't even agree on right and wrong. Our political and justice systems are hopelessly deadlocked and take forever to actually get anything accomplished. We are so screwed up, we charge our children as adults but have millions of actual adults who refuse to grow up.

One hundred years ago, America's problems were solved by Americans. Wars, depressions, panics, bank runs, natural disasters, it didn't matter; we took care of it. We accomplished things. We grew our own food, we design and built our own machines, we produced our own goods, we worked our own land, and we built our own country. We did what had to be done. We did it from sheer will, from a belief that we were good and special, and from a vision to carve out our own place in the world. We took people in from every country who were willing to share our values, our drive, and our dream. Those people came here and became American like us.

Today the Chinese make all of our goods, the Japanese build our machines, the Indians (the Asian kind) fix our problems and write our software, and the Europeans give us our morals. We pay our own people not to grow food. Do you know who is buying up all this American debt that has come out of the financial crisis? The Chinese and the Arabs (Seriously, look it up if you don't believe me. Read about it in the Wall Street Journal or the Investor's Business Daily). We don't own our own country any more. If someone actually gets the gumption to try to accomplish something good, they usually get their pants sued off. Hell, we don't even require people who come here to be American any more, to share our values, our drive, and our dream. We just give them whatever they are happy to take from us. And all the while, our society dies because no one provides or produces anything for America any more. Does this sound like a vibrant, thriving society to you?

Stop expecting Mr. Obama to fix your life for you. Stop the childish hero-worship. He is not the new Messiah. He is not Superman. He is nothing more than a man. You and you alone are responsible for what you make of your life. You want to fix America? You want to resurrect it from the dead? Do it the way we used to do it, the American Way. Remember that phrase? Let's make it more than a punchline. And make sure YOU do it, not Mr. Obama. And while we're at it, screw the rest of the world, too. We do things our own way, and we always have. We (usually) come from honorable motives; we have always prided ourselves on that. So let's just do it our way and if the rest of the world wants to go along with us, so much the better. If not, fuck 'em...they can do their stuff their way and we can do our stuff our way. ("Oh, Chris, how short-sighted of you!" Right, because humanity naturally excels at taking the long view of every problem it faces.)

So let's shut up and get to it. Otherwise, let's just admit that America is dead and move on that way.

(I had seriously planned to never post about politics again. Frankly, after this past campaign season, I wasn't even interested in ever voting again, let alone talking politics or taking the incredible amount of time it takes to post about politics. I don't think anyone else really cares, or that this missive will do any good. I doubt anyone will even agree with what I've just written. I might even lose readers or friends because of this post. I don't really care. I just think it's time we all started acting like grown-ups again.)