Nothing about that sounds silly.

We have to hope. We vote the clown out of office, and those of us like me who are far to the left of most people get to hold civil, respectful debates again, I hope, with normal Republicans - the old GOP kind. Like we used to.

It's useful to remember that the era around WW2 was actually much worse.

Blacks had even fewer rights and were persecuted more openly than today.

7 million jews were getting exterminated in Europe.

People in those days were dealing with Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Japan's Tojo, just for starters.

All of that was overcome.

So my point wasn't to say, "Oh, crap, it's the end game." I'm an eternal optimist. My point was that as flawed as America is, we are hardly alone in our failures, and the original author, who I actually enjoy reading, is a bit disingenuous in the way he singles us out. Most other countries are, at least as messed up as we are.

Many are far worse, especially the two next largest powers, China and Russia.

The U.S. is supposed to be a model. It is an almost impossible ideal to live up to, but we all owe it to each other to keep trying.

I do agree with the author's headline. We need to decide who we are on November 3.