All the way to hell.

I try not to worry. But the state of American politics has me worried. Because it's so polarized. And hateful. Oh, I tell myself I shouldn't worry. That's just the nature of politics. That's why we have revolutions. And civil wars. I know that it's generally thought that our Civil War occurred from about 1861 to 1865. So bloody. But I wonder if we are in the midst of another civil war. With the sharp division between our two major political parties. We aren't necessarily killing each other. But seems to me that we are killing our nation. Because divided we fall. And maybe we are even more divided and hateful than we were in the 1860s. And what is fomenting all of this? It's the media. The way we get our news. Our information. Our ideas. We have so very many competing media. We can pick and choose from hundreds of slants on the round-the-clock news cycle. Very subjective slants. And many, many Americans are incapable of separating fact from fiction. We're too dumb. Too stupid. For instance, many of us tune in the Fox News Network and take it as gospel. We believe all of the bullshit. Our saviors have become the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin and other right wing nuts. Look at 'em. They abound. The more sane commentators see what's happening. We are evolving into a Banana Republic. Where chaos rules. Where big corporations bent on the defeat of sane and common good government rule the roost. They have gained control of our information outlets. Our news media. And most scary of all, our minds. We have been manipulated. As a society. We are following the Pied Piper. Right off the cliff. All the way to hell. --Jim Broede