The first war that I paid any real attention to was the Second World War.

 The first war that I paid any real attention to was the Second World War.  I was still a child, but I grasped the magnitude of what was happening, even if I did not really comprehend it.  The first war that I got involved in personally was Korea.  I gave up a college deferment and joined the army out of old fashioned patriotism.  I came out of that war convinced that I was going to dedicate my life to making peace in the world.  I ended up spending thirty years engaged in a wide variety of war and near-war all over the world.  In the process, I have thought about war more than my average American neighbor.  It does not automatically make me smarter than my neighbor, but it does give me a viewpoint that is significantly different than the average American voter alive today.

A very, very important part of my backstory is my very minor role in the successful effort to defeat the Soviet Union.  Although I can readily point to a huge number of tactical failures along the way, I also note our ultimate success in the strategic destruction of the Soviet Union - without triggering World War III.  My thesis is that unlike the America that won the peace following WWII and brought Germany, Italy and Japan back into the family of nations, the America that defeated the Soviets permitted a two bit hoodlum to reconstitute a wannabe soviet state in the Federated Russian Republic.  Instead of working to incorporate Russia into the family of nations we stupidly permitted it to reestablish itself as a rogue nation.

In addition to the threat posed by Vladimir Putin, we have also seen a resurgence of instability in the Middle East, the Far East, Africa and the Americas.  Inevitably, these tensions interact in ways that multiply the dangers inherent in each.  An important common denominator in each is our ineffectiveness in dealing with the particulars inherent in that particular conflict.  Failure in quelling violence in one place literally encourages more violence in other places.  I find it fascinating that the exact same principal applicable to international violence is applicable to domestic violence as well.

All of this leads me to conclude that America should step up to the challenge and actually lead the world to a better future as being the only way that we will be able to ensure our own future.  I suggest that you and I are not now thinking in these terms.  The only thing that unites us, left and right, is our disinterest in other people's problems.  We are convinced that  our internal arguments are the preeminent threat facing us.  The sign on the bathroom door, the age of the fetus, the price of gasoline, our precious feelings.  What passes as an internal discussion of important matters is nothing more than a urinary exercise by mindless children.  

Ultra conservatives are just as wrong as are ultra liberals, but the thing that is destroying us is our inability to talk to each other about the real world in real terms.  The principal reason that we do not do that, is that we have lost touch with the real world.  We exist in self-imposed fantasies made possible by the very wealth and power that we endanger with our stupidity.