I'm just not feeling the warm and fuzzies this Fourth of July like I have in the past. It could be because of my recent bout with "underemployment", maybe it's the increasingly hard scraping together of a mortgage payment every month for an underwater house. Maybe it's the longest American war in history still lingering on with no end in sight, maybe it's the worst oil spill in American history still bubbling away in the gulf, or maybe it's the cumulative effects of this worst recession since the great depression. We're all trying our best to champion on, myself included, but pardon me if I'm not waving my little plastic flag this holiday as energetically as I have in the past.

I have to admit, I'm feeling a little left out of the current political conversations. I'm frustrated, I'm angry, but I have no intention of joining any tea party movement. I listen to FOX, probably more than CNN, or MSNBC, but more to just catch the outrageousness of their propaganda these days. Much like someone watches NASCAR for the car crashes. I find myself just shaking my head more and more at the growing income gap,  the plight of the middle class, the breakdown of American values (and please don't try to shovel "traditional" American values down my throat) and the selling out of politicians to a corrupt Wall Street and banking elite. I'm shaking my head at career politicians who seem to have aspired and to have worked their entire lives to become part of the process, to become part of this great political machine that runs American only to throw pipe wrenches in the gears, and claim they're doing their job.

I also seem to be one of the few people that feel there really is a role for government. This in a world where a belief in American government now somehow is portrayed as un-American.  I certainly don't think it's governments job to take care of everything, to solve every problem, but I certainly believe it has its place. It certainly serves a very important purpose. I keep having to remind myself that yes democratic government is indeed one of the great contributions of modern civilization. I have to remind myself this as more and more often a valid, democratically elected government is portrayed as a wild out-of-control beast, a freedom killing, tax sucking monster that is out to get us all. Increasingly the solution presented is to get rid of it all together, or at least to starve the beast into a weakened stupor so it can be caged and controlled.

When did we give up on government? When did we decide there was no fixing it, no solution but the scrap heap? When did government become that playground game of "if I don't win, I'm taking my ball home." We don't demand accountability, transparency, or effectiveness, we just blindly demand smaller, smaller, smaller. With no regard to the right amount of government needed for the job, the right amount of checks and balances, the right amount of regulation and control. We increasingly see the results of this folly, and it goes back to my list at the top. The deepest, longest recession since the depression, the biggest oil spill in US history and now the longest war (of two currently) we've ever been engaged in.

We've become crippled by dogma and political purity tests, we've been blinded by sensationalist media infotainment, we've let corporate interests and a power elite and their lobbying arms write our laws with little regards for anyone but themselves. We have in short lost any grasp on a greater good, a sense of community and common values that once defined our country. In fact, the very words such as "greater good" and "social justice" are twisted now into something evil and frightening. We let words like "socialist" , "dictator", and "government takeover" be twisted into totally new meanings and stretched beyond understanding. We have lost the power of debate and conversation, joining islands tribes of like thinking people, who do nothing but shout curses, shake fists and throw bombs at the people on the next island. And like the workers on the Tower of Babel we don't even speak the same language anymore.

Maybe I'm being overly nostalgic, but it seems there used to be an idea that government had a part, business has a part, even politicians had a part - that every engaged citizen had a part to play in this great experiment called the U.S.A. Yet, I'm reminded of the old saying, that democracy was always doomed to failure, mainly since once the lower classes discovered they could vote themselves unlimited benefits and entitlements that the system would collapse upon itself. Whoever would have dreamed the opposite would be true, that it would be the upper classes, business and finance that would discover they could manipulate the system so they not have to pay their fair share. In fact manipulate the system to the point, that not only could they avoid paying their fair share and behave responsibly, that if they messed up, the middle class was there to bail them out. How did we get here?

I, like the tea party, treasure my American right to bitch and moan, to complain about my government. But it's still MY government, and it's like a family member, sure I can tease and make fun, but damn if I'm going to allow big business, Wall Street, and a handful of robber barons push it around. For my part, if i want to complain about the war, about BP and industry regulation, about Wall Street bailouts, about the untenable burden being put on the middle class, about the lobbyist that run Washington, that's my right - it's also very American of me to do so. What I resent though, is that my insistence that government do its job, do it correctly, do it efficiently, do it for the right people, in short do what we elected it to do, that that ideal is somehow now naive, that that is somehow itself un-American, even un-patriotic -- that I resent deeply. The latest political talking points have even included hints of "second-amendment solutions" and we've seen political ads calling people to "gather their armies." Yet, we've had a revolution, we had one when Obama was elected. We've had them before. The Contract on America was a revolution, Reagan led a revolution, our history is full of revolution. However, we have always respected the ballot box and the intelligence of the electorate, and the utility of constructive civic discourse. We are broken. America is broken and blind party allegiance, short-term political gains, and cable ratings wars, are not going to provide the fix.