I would suggest that the feeling that the country has severe problems that are solvable, but the political class is too dysfunctional to solve them, is widespread. You'll probably have to search hard to find someone who thinks that things are just ducky these days. But that may be where the similarity ends between your colleagues and the Tea Partiers. In my observation, the Tea Party feeds off the generalized discontent but is motivated by a specific ideology. For instance, many Democrats believe that everyone should have access to health care, even if they can't afford it, and most in the Tea Party do not. That's a fundamental ideological difference.

I don't know if unbridgeable ideological gaps are responsible for the problems of the present time. Others point to public apathy, the role of money, the banality of mass media, or other factors.

I come at this at the age of 28, someone who is looking to get into politics and is ready to see some of the old-timers get out. I have a sort of can-do enthusiasm that I know I will look back upon one day as naive. I've seen that, despite all reports to the contrary, the legislative process does actually work well sometimes. I do think that sooner or later we will get out of this malaise we are in, if for no reason other than that enough people are fed up with it.

Excerpt: As I thought about it, it came to me that the observations of these experienced, tough-minded people were not far from those being made by independent voters and Tea Partiers — a general disappointment and disillusionment with things as they are and a frustration that big problems are not being effectively addressed. Perhaps an important sign of the times.

Thanks to pepper2000. Mr. Van Dyk needs to talk less to his tired, pessimistic older friends and more to can-do people like this who aren't stuck in the supposed greatness of the past. I'm also amazed that the writer can speak of "frustration that big problems are not being effectively addressed." President Obama and the Dems have effectively addressed a HUGE problem that no president for the last century has been able to act on, meaning health care. There also was big action on economic stimulus, and there are big proposals pending action on financial regulation, climate change, and immigration, among others. Just because Mr. Van Dyk's hobby horse of entitlement cutting hasn't happened doesn't mean the Dems haven't been ambitious in tackling big issues.

If he and his friends are identifying with the concerns of the Tea Partiers, then they are identifying with the foes of effective action on big problems.

Pepper,
You may be too young yet to have been asked by a doctor when you come in with a compliant: "And what have you been doing for it?" And whatever you say, told: "Well, stop that." Or it could be that doctors are less interested in cures than they used to be and don't say that as much.

Nevertheless, you will never be naive if presented a persistent problem you always ask first: what is being done that is making this problem persist, most likely making it worse, in fact, may be the cause of the whole thing.

That cuts though ideology like nothing else.

The best to you.

Ted:

Ted: You are too young to remember, as I do, the Great Depression and WWII, when things were really tough. Those events demonstrated the great resiliency of the U.S. and our ability to grow and solve problems. As Jon Bridgeman of UW says, we are a self-correcting society - and we are solving a lot of chronic problems. Hang in there and maybe see that you are hanging out with the wrong, young crowd? Frank Wetzel

I agree with you Ted. I think that we have a real crisis on our hands that poses a real threat to the principles on which the republic was founded. Surprisingly, I see the outrage on both the Progressive Left and the Tea Party right as evidence of this crisis.

The Progressive Left is justifiably outraged at how "the System" has been gamed by those who have the power to co-opt it. The is is evident by excessive pay for corporate executives, the stock bonuses for Wall Street traders who have the luck to have a positive year (50% of which are always going to perform above the market average), the revolving door between government and industry, the monetary slavery imposed by high interest credit cards, sub-prime mortgages, pay-day loans, and subsidized government student loans (which can never be dismissed).

The Tea Party right similarly justified in their outrage at the behind-door political deals and porkbarrel politics. They are justified in questioning the concentration of power in Washington DC and the lack of local control of schools and courts. They are justified in questioning expenditures of tax dollars on education, health care, and social services on those who have criminally entered this country illegally.

Whether on the left or the right, both know in their souls that something has changed.

On the Progressive Left, we call for more regulation and wealth redistribution.

On the Tea Party Right, we call for honesty and fairness and control of our own communities.

Our government is broken...broken...broken.

Thank you for the generally constructive comments.

Frank: I am afraid I am old enough to remember both the Great Depression and World War II and, thus, continue to have faith in our country's resiliency. My friends are of the same age. I was most startled by
Dave Obey's exit. He still had great power, and the ability to make a real difference, and it was uncharacteristic that he would announce his departure as he did.

The one difference to me about the past and the present is that this time, we are our own worst enemy most of the time.

Unfortunately, we've changed from a republic representing the People, and morphed into a republic of the Corporation. We need to as a nation stop accepting what has become an open bribe, specifically political contributions and lobbying-by-donation for companies. Only the very richest people could afford to keep up, and they are usually spending corporate money anyhow.

They tax us, but they don't represent us. I'm generally liberal, but I see the annoyance from both sides of the spectrum as being an indictment of a system that has gotten away from its intentions. This is why all sides are rumbling. There was a time when people could get elected to Congress without the help of major corporate donors. Until we return to that, we are going to bulge at the seems with resent and failure.

If you aren't sure how bad it is, search opensecrets dotorg.

Part of the problem is told at the very beginning of this article. Namely, Obey was 1st elected in 1969!! Congress is filled with people who have been there too long and who have embraced the corporate money thereby wrecked our democracy. In Seattle, people like Kerry Killinger ran WAMU into the ground and caused thousands of people to lose their jobs and thousands of investors to lose unknown millions of dollars. Killinger's punishment... a $25 million bonus.

Oil Executives Bush and Cheney occupied the White House for just long enough to start 2 wars in the Middle East as well as roll back our civil liberties and federal regulations. Their reward... tens of billions of dollars in oil profits and war profiteering by Halliburton.

Now we have a President who has started a covert war in Pakistan by using Predator drones to kill who knows how many people in yet another undeclared, unconstitutional war.

President Obama also used secret army intelligence planes to intercept phone calls made by the SUV Wanna Bomber in New York City, another violation of the Constitution.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/45253

The article above shows a screen capture of a news site that talks about the army planes used. However, the news article was scrubbed and edited to remove those references. Obviously the CIA or government agency compelled them to do that.

As drumcat says above, we've morphed into the Republic of the Corporations where the President, Congress and the Supreme Court all collude with corporate executives to ruin this country. Perhaps Obey is just tired of being surrounded by so much corruption and he wants to get out.

He said he fears some event or action would trigger a crisis of confidence and set dominoes falling. Perhaps that crisis of confidence is already here and perhaps the dominoes already are falling.

The critical question may be whether our institutional machinery has degraded past the point where some sort of regenerative self-correction is still possible. It appears that three of Ted's influential friends have concluded that this point of no return has been passed. An ability to self-correct implies a framework that is sound enough that the majority of participants can still agree in some basic degree what the ideal entails and identify problematic behavior as aberrational. What seems to be especially discouraging about the contemporary situation is that the clarity of the ideal has faded, proven counterproductive behavior is still being offered as a panacea, and opportunism is being palmed off as high principle. In other words, the forces of degradation remain powerful (and indeed seem to be waxing) and the self-corrective mechanism has stalled. The pervasive public distrust of government will make it difficult to reverse this momentum.

Too bad Congressman Obey and most of his colleagues never read or applied the economic and sociological analysis of Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian School of Economics as detailed in his treatise published in 1951. For the benefit of Crosscut readers, Mr. Van Dyk, and others who desire to make some sense of the mess we are in, here is a free online version published by Yale University Press: http://mises.org/books/socialism.pdf
.

A related matter not yet addressed here is that instead of figuring out the next economy—one consistent with stopping the degradation of nature of which we are a part, not apart, the current economy is more than happy to float "sustainable development" atop business as usual, aka there's green in them there hills.

And the last to know of this are those likely to be the maddest if they ever figure it out. Very Sad.

I take my information from all sides and have even found a few today's socialists with eyes in their heads, e.g. Planet of Slums, Mike Davis.

No one who even dares to think about it says a "mature" economy will be easy, but it is past time to grow up.

We can't stop the degradation of nature. There are some things that have started--that we have contributed toward if not entirely caused--that cannot be stopped. The polar ice caps are melting at a rate that shocks even pessimists. We have only the choice of how we behave.

The planet will actually be fine (as that great environmental scientist George Carlin said). Our environment, our experience of nature and of life, will not, if we continue to insist that "fine" means we expect human beings to live on every surface of the planet and that world economies continue to develop (as in the constant raising of everyone's standard of living). The oil well disaster in the Gulf area is the most obvious example of corporate crime that we have allowed, all of us; the increasing weather-related disasters are less obvious but no less related to it. Just as the BP platform was a disaster that apparently was forecast by several episodes learned about but not made public until yesterday, the continuing degradation of our environment is no less predictable. We need realism, not (as Afreeman nicely terms it above) floating sustainable development atop business as usual. But I'm afraid there will be no "next economy". Realism means hunkering down and accepting what we've done and can't undo, and making the best of it until the earth throws us off for the flotsam we are.

We CAN stop degrading the nature of which we are a PART, but as Sarah points out, we are not the least vital to nature's future evolution even though our behavior from well before the invention of agriculture has been largely responsible for nature's evolution to date. The lowly bacteria, the first life on earth, are still vital to all the rest of nature, including us, and are fully capable of surviving a nuclear holocaust.

Believe it or not, these are exciting times for optimists. Unbeknownst to political circles (at least those in charge of the economy) optimists abound because the integration and application of all we are learning is so near yet so far. For a virtual (low CO2) trip, put your nose in Steve McIntosh's "Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution" or Esbjorn-Hargens & Zimmerman's Integral Ecology.