Tossed Salad

As history goes, Rome fell as the citizens became apathetic, concerned only with themselves- their pleasures and profits- blind to the outside world.

Witnessing six years of gross negligence on the part of the Bush administration- from distorted intelligence to stoke public opinion in favor of an ill-prepared war to the President lying on national television as to the extent of his knowledge prior to the breach of New Orleans’ levees- leaves me wondering what our President can’t get away with.

Lets face it, our country wasted $50-million investigating Presidential hanky-panky under the guise of the Whitewater land deal. Congress tried its hardest to impeach a President for perjuring himself about an extra-marital affair, because it offended out WASP-ish sensibilities.

Yet there has been little, if any, investigation into fabricated evidence leading to an illegal war, the violation of civil liberties through warrantless wiretaps, or the award of billions of dollars in no-bid military contracts in a blatant show of cronyism.

The government continues to cut spending to entitlement and social programs to finance wars we cannot afford because of fiscally irresponsible tax cuts. Education grants are on the chopping block, because America’s youth don’t need education as much as business needs tax breaks- even as they export jobs to countries without wage protections.

The issues that matter most to U.S. citizens currently are abortion and gay marriage. Where are our priorities? Over two thousand young men and women are dead. An American city sits a shell of its former self, with reconstruction occurring at a snail’s pace, without the threat of suicide bombings hanging over the effort as it does in Iraq. We can spend billions on bombs, but balk at spending equally on reconstructing a city in our own country.

We have truly become an apathetic country, we are screwed on a daily basis, and most of us could care less. We decry the flip-floppers, yet ignore the constant shifting of our Commander in Chief. So long as we have Big Macs, bling, and Mtv, we are content to watch our civilization follow the trail blazed by the Romans.