Even by our standards, if you go back to the 1970s.

If you dropped Barack Obama by parachute into the 1970s, he'd be a Republican. I paid $300 for state tuition in 1976. The same university's tuition today is $18,000. The top tax bracket was over 70%. Today it is around 30.

There was general agreement in those days about social welfare. Heck, Tricky Dick Nixon proposed a national health care plan.

This was shot down by the people who eventually gave us Ronald Reagan. America hasn't recovered from Reagan. People still think things like deficit spending are bad (it is not). They believe that the American Dream is pulling yourself up by the bootstraps no matter what the odds, and doing it on your own, beating your fists against your chest and grabbing a rifle, holding it high in the air, and saying, "I have won!".

This is the kind of culture we are up against. The patient is very sick, indeed, and bandages won't help. The cure requires a deep rethinking of what it means to be American, and it starts with compassion towards others. I'm not sure we will get there. 74 million people voted for a narcissistic president. It was a reflection of themselves. Changing this probably requires an act of God.