I read about two-thirds of the way through "This used to be us by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum and felt a bit pessimistic about our future. We have too many jingoistic, short-sighted politicians and citizens.
Then I read the little blurb to accompany the interview with Slavoj Zizek, "Now the field is open" in which he thinks that "the marriage between capitalism and democracy is over".
Consider that China, an autocratic regime, is growing faster than most other countries in the world, and that the United States, a supposedly democratic government, is all tied up in petty squabbles how to unstick a somewhat anemic economy.
China has a government rife with corruption that is trying to define the common good, and the U.S. has a government rife with corruption that is trying to maximize the profits of a few, claiming that it will promote the common good.
Until each of these two countries has a sound understanding of the "civic virtue" called for by the writers of the Federalist Papers, our planet is doomed to be "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" as described by Thomas Friedman in the book of the same title.
