Truth. Just truth.

Perusing Doctor Zero's comments, I came upon this pinpoint critique of American society. All emphases are mine.

z9z99 says:

There’s a line in Annie Hall in which Alvie Singer admits to a young woman “You’re right. I am a bigot. But for the left.” There you have, in a nutshell, why a significant portion of the American population overlooks failings that honorable people have learned are grave moral shortcomings. Being a bigot, liar, tax-cheat, philanderer, traitor, weasel, reprobate, chauvinist, elitist, hypocrite, exploiter, despoiler, glutton, back-stabber, thief, or sociopath is excusable as long as it is sanctified by the proper politics. Once again, we see how America is trying to skate by on the cheap and easy, falling for the con that emotional satisfaction is an acceptable substitute for principles.
Our current disarray is not the inescapable result of social complexity, unhealthy concentrations of wealth, or menacing forces lurking in the darkness. Rather, it is the natural and unavoidable price that a society pays when it has allowed itself to be distracted by celebrity, to indulge adolescent fantasies and grudges, and be seduced by the serpentine myth that it is “entitled” to something. Our budget is shaky, our security questionable, and our insitutions tottering, quite simply because we have earned for ourselves the stupidest, shallowest and most incompetent political class in our history. We have allowed ourselves to be ruled by mediocrities and scoundrels that appealed almost exclusively to the notion that we should not vote for their opponent.
Negative campaigning and pop-psychological fluff have been the criteria which has given us more morons, jackanapes and grifters in our government than at any other time in our history. Now these same defective overachievers want us to cede more of our liberty to compensate for their lack of brains, character and courage.

We have the dumbest Speaker of the House in history; a shallow, unprepared President; an unprincipled hack as Senate Majority leader; and a passel of political opportunists like Arlen Specter, Ben Nelson, Charlie Crist, and Michael Bloomberg ,whose beliefs are blown about by the slightest breezes of political opportunity.

We have been given the greatest opportunities of liberty, natural resources, economic and technological innovation, and legacy of sacrifice in pursuit of noble ideals and human dignity that the world has ever known. We have chosen to neglect them on grounds that holding and honoring principles is too hard, voting for corrupt, pandering politicians is too easy; and being proud of our accomplishments and decency is too unfashionable. I say, “screw that.” I’m an American, dammit, and I am not entitled to anything that I don’t earn honorably. The proper response to the great gifts of freedom and comfort that I enjoy is humble gratititude, not peurile indignity and grievance. My happiness, success, honor and those of my family are my responsibilities, not to be relinquished to, but rather protected against, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, and the gaggle of fools and miscreants that think they know what is best for me better than I do.
America will turn around and maintain its greatness when we all get serious about electing a government for which principle and character are not optional.

Yeah. It's kinda like that.