Not even the top 5.

I am about to make a significant change in my life that will increase my happiness and improve my blog posts - I am going to become apolitical.

Actually, I was apolitical for most of my life. I remember voting for Richard Nixon in 1972, which probably says a lot. After that I had opinions on some of the big issues, but I wasn't really involved. Until George W. Bush became president. When he was first elected, I thought it would be interesting to see what happened. There was no way I was able to imagine how bad things would get.

So I became a political junkie. I read books about politics and scoured newspapers for editorials and op-eds. I wanted to know what was going on and understand what might happen. But that doesn't make any sense, it only causes unhappiness.

Americans seem to want to believe in our "exceptionalism", meaning that we are the best country in the world. We aren't. We aren't even in the top five, and I seriously doubt that we're in the top ten. We are big and rich and powerful, but far from great. The standard of living of our middle class has been in decline for twenty years. Meanwhile, the pay of corporate executives, which in other countries averages about three times the pay of the average worker, here has increased to three hundred times that level. Our health care is by far the most expensive in the world, but its quality is somewhere around 13th and dropping. We are the only wealthy country which does not provide affordable, quality healthcare to its most needy citizens. We run average or low in happiness and personal freedom. We are rapidly losing our edge in science. (Hint: one does not choose what to *believe* in science, because science is knowledge.)

Our federal government is not only dysfunctional, it is corrupt. Bribery of public officials is legal in the guise of campaign contributions, and it is very clear that our representatives are in government for their own enrichment. When is the last time you saw a Congressperson do something right even though unpopular?

I used to have faith in the courts, but even they have become corrupt. The Supreme Court clearly has a partisan agenda, which is exactly what a court that interprets the laws is not suppose to have. Remember Chief Justice John Roberts saying at his confirmation hearings that he would be an "umpire", interpreting the laws but not making them? Yet he, in a highly unusual move, expanded the scope of Citizens United in order to overturn 100 years of precedent and give extraordinary political power to corporations, to the detriment of citizens.

But that isn't the worst of it. Consider healthcare. President Obama championed and finally saw passed the first significant healthcare reform in 60 years. Immediately Republicans, displaying their loyalty to insurance companies and for-profit healthcare providers, vowed to see the law repealed and began to derogatorily refer to it as "Obamacare". The law, though chopped up and defanged by necessary compromise, will eventually make healthcare more affordable for everyone and available to almost every American. And yet the GOP shamelessly promotes falsehoods such as "death panels" that will deny care to granny, and then the drooling morons who comprise the GOP "base" dutifully march to the polls to vote against their own best interests. And that, indeed, is the problem - most of the people in this country are dumber than spit.

You might ask if I love America. I don't. I don't even know what it means to love a country. I will continue to try to be a good citizen, but that will only mean boning up on issues in order to vote intelligently. The editorials and op-eds can go to hell, because they make no difference and do no good.