Normally The New York Times' Frank Bruni is too partisan a lefty to be mentioned in this admittedly righty blog. In today' column he forgoes the partisanship and writes of the eleven years the pollster's favorite right track/wrong track question has come up in negative territory.
Bruni alludes obliquely to Obama's limp foreign policy as a contributing factor. Clearly what is needed is a Reaganesque candidate who can convince us we can reclaim our "city on a hill" status, our "indispensable nation" role in a troubled world.
What's wrong? One thing is sure, microaggressions and trigger words aren't cutting it as public policy. People will hear things they'd rather not hear ... get over it.
"Leading from behind" seems to most of the world as an abdication of responsibility. Multiculturalism is a mistake, assimilation should be our goal for immigrants.
Longer term, we must find employment for our average-and-below citizens who will never star in Silicon Valley or become rocket scientists or neurosurgeons. Understanding it had to support them anyway, the Soviets bought war widows a broom and a dustpan and paid them to keep their block clean instead of buying $100K street-sweepers.
We need that sort of out-of-the-box thinking. The genetic lottery will keep tossing up subnormals until we take charge via dreaded eugenics and end the practice.
Ugly as it sounds, we should reinstitute mental hospitals to warehouse persons with scrambled "operating systems." Having them live on the streets isn't satisfactory.
Have we the courage to do what is difficult because it is right? I am pessimistic.
