What Is The State Of The Union?

I noticed that CNN and other outlets were suggesting people fire up their camcorders and record their own State of the Union (SoTU) address. I'll spare you the video and audio - my hair is having a bad year so far - but here's my take on the state of America:

America is disheartened, disillusioned, depressed, and despairing.

Under Mr. Bush's "watch" (and, except for all the spying he does on our mail (snail and electronic), our phone calls, our blogs and other Web sites, et al), we've watched our country driven to bankruptcy on existential-only threats while billionaire contractors made huge new profits in Iraq and Afghanistan and here at home with homeland (in)security no-bid contracts only to show no real performance.

The president, while waging war on the working and middle class (sadly, much of the working class no longer can afford to deceive itself into believing they are middle class anymore), has talked non-stop about bigger and bigger tax cuts for billionaires and wildly-wealthy-already corporations like energy companies that have already secured the biggest taxpayer-to-corporation welfare checks in history.

But Americans have some responsibility for our "state" as well. We have not usually participated in our so-called representative democracy with many of us not even bothering to show up to vote; of those who do, many don't bother to call or write their reps to voice their approval or disapproval over what they do.

We need to take our country back and become far more vocal as well as knowledgeable about what is going on. If we don't want America to be an empire, then WE must step up to the plate and make our government realize we need to focus Washington's attention on education and health care and domestic policy and STOP the madness with trying to reshape the rest of the world in the image of corrupt Capitol Hill.

We have seen our elected representatives all too often fall down on the job. So ultimate responsibility must fall to us. If we can't trust them to do their jobs, then we must not fail to do ours as citizens, as voters, and as global citizens as well.