I am actually an optimist like gato, though perhaps on a bit longer timeline.

For the last century or so, the original American experiment has been slowly replaced by a progressive-corporatist experimental abomination, with the predicable (and predicted) outcome we are all so enjoying now: pervasive, institutional corruption, an utterly bankrupt, insane government, a population not far behind, with a society to which the term "libertine" is an understatement.

I believe that progressivism is at or approaching it's zenith, with its uninterrupted failures and catastrophes finally being exposed to a wide audience, thanks to largely technological advances that cannot be contained, although they are giving it their best college try.

However, whatever comes next will have to be birthed during a great reckoning: financial, societal, moral.

This is why communites such as gato has created here are so important.

When the time comes, which I believe will be right soon now, we need to still be standing as the voice of sanity, reason and ethics.

And we will need to lead.