We're around the bend. It's over. Forget it. No democracy has lasted more than a couple hundred years. We've been running on fumes, and the ride is over.

I don't recall hearing people speak this way until the last eight years. Previously it seemed, even in the dark days of the mid-`70s, that there was some belief the United States was the greatest nation on earth and would reclaim its former glory. Nowadays the consensus seems to be we may well be finished.

Yesterday I bought a gallon of milk, and it was $4.29. Gas around here is $4.02 on average. I can do without gas before I can do without milk. Cereal is about $4 a box. Should I start eating cake?

But yesterday I watched a piece on the Travel Channel about Turkey. Turkey doesn't have a pot to piss in. Almost every structure is in ruin. All they have for entertainment is to watch men oil themselves up and wrestle in tall weeds in vacant lots, or stare at crumbled statues they built back when the Greeks ruled the world. I've seen other Travel Channel pieces about the mountains of Italy and the seaside of Spain and, sorry to our European readers (and we do have some), but it killed any ideas I had about going back to the old country.

George Carlin said the reason this country was finished was that Americans should have been demanding a return to true democracy but instead, "Everyone's got a cell phone that makes pancakes now so nobody wants to rock the boat." He said the typical American was "at the mall, scratching his ass and picking his nose, pulling a credit card out of his fanny pack so he can buy sneakers with lights in them."

Watching these travel shows, mixing them with what Carlin said, and introspecting on it all this past Fourth of July...I'm glad to report the United States is still quite salvageable.

George missed the point: the cell phone that makes pancakes and the sneakers with lights in them are the whole POINT! When the founding fathers set sail on the Mayflower, their heads were filled with dreams of pancake-making cell phones and light-up sneakers! Those Turks? No cell phones or sneakers for them! Just oiling up and rubbing around on their buddies. Sorry, I'll take the sneakers and cell phone.

Of course democracy is important. It's true, we've let capitalism get ahead of our original values. Used to America was described with words like "freedom" and "bravery," now the words I hear most often are "capitalism" and "free markets." As a result of this the country has been turned into nothing but a shopping mall, where foreign interests can buy us out as the corporations sell us out. That kind of thing has got to stop.

But we're in a excellent position to stop it. If we had nothing but some ruined statues and vegetable oil like those Turks, or lacked dish washers like the people in the mountains of Italy, we might have a tougher road to hoe. When your cell phone is capable of making pancakes, though, you're in an advantageous position to create a renaissance.

While I was writing this article I ran across this page that discusses society as a living organism. They say that after a society embraces a decadent, i.e. death instinct for awhile, it is about to begin a new life instinct, i.e. renaissance era.

I hope so. Let's see you do it.