Oops -- I mean "correct". Sorry, Bows.

One only has to look at how close this country teetered to that precipice at the turn of the last century, at the end of the Gilded Age, to understand. It's not a period taught with any thoroughness in American history classes. The wars make so much more exciting narrative.

At that time, the reformer leader that came to pull us back was Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican very much unlike the Republicans we have today. And he was not elected to the office of President: he got into office because McKinley was shot. By an anarchist, from the 19th century incarnation of international terror.

We have a new version of the Gilded Age, except that information, good, bad, and indifferent, is flying around like snowflakes in a blizzard, speeding everything up.

I'm seeing this. I know the people in charge don't, in their triumphal intoxication. And I keep thinking, the crisis, when it comes -- and it will -- will refocus America if we don't all die. I gotta hope we don't all die.