Not the Best

Many of our leaders have a vested interest in keeping American in the dark about things.  An informed electorate is likely to demand real changes.

Living in America means you live in the strongest country that ever existed.  It doesn't mean that America can do whatever it wants, It also doesn't mean that America is the best. 

Being best and being strongest are not the same thing.  Now, measuring the best requires some sort of standard.  It also isn't the easiest thing to do on an overall basis.

Clearly the best in having the lowest taxes might impact being the best in providing universal health care.  We actually have transferred much of the cost of providing health care to companies but of course that simply means we pay for it in the price of goods we buy, a hidden cost.

It makes the cost sort of invisible and allows us to pretend we are not paying it, but we are.

Consumer taxes like this becomes are of course the most regressive since they hit everyone who buys the product equally with no regard for ability to pay.

So every time you buy a box of breakfast cereal you are paying for someone's health care, although admittedly indirectly.

This is part of the slight of hand we play in this country and it points out an area where we are far behind most of the civilized world, and that is in understanding how Government actually works.

We do horribly anytime anyone tests us on this knowledge and there is no evidence indicating we are getting better at it.

We live in a semi delusional world where things we don't understand happen and everybody blames the other side for it.

We end up voting for people based on either personality, where we grew up or some lies they tell us.

We have people in office who tell us that climate change isn't real when no educated person can really believe that anymore.

Our system allows a fairly small number of voters to dictate who wins a primary and in some places winning the right primary guarantees election.  

Our failure to understand our system, understand how Government works and understand what the real issues are is something that we need to fix to make America great.

Cutting funds for public broadcasting is designed to do exactly the opposite.