Frank, you triggered a couple of memory associations when you wrote:

Nothing will change as long as the systems continue to work.

...following right after I read the transcript of Limbaugh's diatribe. The system does continue to work and the Republic still stands...and conservatives have been complaining about the same things and making the same dire predictions for as long as I can remember (oh yep, here we go with another one of those reminiscences).

My Dad's always been Attila the Republican, and I can remember sitting in the living room in Los Angeles circa 1960 watching various right-wing commentators on TV, with my Dad getting all wound up listening to them (as he still does today). One in particular comes to mind when I read/hear Rush rant, George Putnam, a fixture of LA broadcasting since 1951. I amazed myself just now dredging that name up from my childhood memories, but that bio confirms the memory and that my recollection of his politics was dead on. It was the same then as it is now: "Taxes are too damn high!" "Government spending's out of control!" "Get the damn guvmint off our backs!" "The damn commie liberal pointy-head intellectuals are poisoning the moral fiber of this nation!" and on and on ad nauseum.

But America's still here, and in most every way that counts we're in better shape now than when George Putnam was railing that the country's going to hell in a handbasket. Somehow America's survived and the system still works.

So forgive me if I don't take fulminations like those from Rush and Tom too seriously. The sky isn't falling.