Afghanistan

As masterful as President Obama's health care speech was, he operates in a nation that is increasingly losing the capacity to govern itself. The blurt of the loutish South Carolina Republican congressman, calling the president a liar, something I have never heard in listening to presidential addresses before that body since JFK…well, that's the least of the problem.

Health care reform foundered on the vicious lies of a well-organized minority and, apparently, the simple-mindedness of the American people (all manipulated by the health industries' hundreds of millions of lobbying dollars). The side dish was the ongoing hyperventilation over the president's citizenship or lack thereof. Then came the hysteria over his "indoctrination" of schoolchildren from a harmless speech (two other presidents have done this, with no controversy). All this from a minority of nuts — and their reactionary masters — who nonetheless dominated the television from which most Americans get their "news." This is how we spent our summer. One would never know who won the election last fall.

Think of all we're not discussing. Not even thinking about as a nation.