Coping with the end of the Amerian Era

Two issues for thought
Living in Europe as an expat looking in I am coming to believe we are the only democracy slowly but surely bucking the trend of civilized nations, a trend that regulates the imperialistic drives of capitalism and prioritizes the well being of its citizens. We extol our belief in the uniqueness of our democracy to the point of American Exceptional-ism, but when one looks at recent history if feels more like the tail wags dog syndrome than a democratic process.
Okay, that is a bold perhaps presumptuous introduction, but nowhere in Europe where I have spent close to half of my 60 year existence have I seen such destructive forces unleashed, but worse yet fanned by no less that half the nation' political institution. Yes there are radical groups throughout the different western European nations but they are fringe, not mainstream, and even in a country like France with a highly polarized left right political spectrum, the excessive language, denigrations, lies and innuendos we see now do not occur.
Jim Selman recently published a piece titled "Is this the end of democracy??", here is his opening phrase
"Future historians may mark the first decade of the 21st century as the time when democracy died. And if they do, they will say that democracy died because people became so resigned and afraid that they retreated into closed and cloistered communities motivated by self-interest, ideological fervor and ignorance. History will note that what began as honest differences grew into an irreconcilable fragmentation of the body politic".
Are not all these hate mongering, gun toting aggressive postures and organized character assassinations signs of a degradation of our societal values? What appears certain is whether through greed or selfishness our "e pluribus unum" principle has failed. Our runaway health care problem resembles our "greed is good" wall street problem, today we are willing to let an ever increasing number of our citizens fall through the cracks of egocentricity and indifference.. one wonders how much money is enough?
Since Reagan and the supply side economic theories that have been experimented and applied since through varying methods, from reduced taxation to deregulation, we have created an economic system that favors the wealthy and most able and has lost a sense of our responsibility for the less able and endowed, and for ensuring they are provided opportunity. Some call this the greed generation, some have sought to defer such criticism through such altruist notions as the "thousand points of light" are there, but now they are extinguishing and in the end we are failing our national cohesion.
One wonders what brought about this situation. I suspect the causes are multiple interwoven complexities, political, economic, ethnocentric, but the catalyst today is health care reform.
Several issues come to mind; perhaps the first is the self proclaimed role America has assumed as the world's policeman on the beat. There is no doubt that until the end of the cold war we had a major role to play and a vested interest in remaining the dominant defense industrial base in the world. We had and still have imperialistic impulses on both the foreign policy and economic fronts, but the real result is the United States never received a peace dividend as Western Europe did, yes largely due to our policing for them, but since, from Wall Street to the Capitol and most often the White House the often four to one ration in defense spending has been protected with disputable arguments. A small example is the cost of Iraq war compared to health care. (If the subject was really tabled I am sure someone would question how France, the world's #1 in health care also has Europe's largest defense outlays and defense industrial base, but we are not there yet).
A second issue came to mind looking at the Bill Moyers interview of David Frum Conservatism that can win again (want to say God forbid). He arguments on the health care industry’ fifty different regulatory bases, implying their administrative costs have gone wild due to compliance, structural redundancies, etc. He might have a point but if these industries were asked to comply with a single Federal regulatory base they would scream... with probably the vast majority of Congress.
But the real point is taxation from two perspectives.
From one perspective: Scream you must for the loss of state revenues? Scream you must for the ensuing transparency and loss of exorbitant profits? And or is it scream you must for the loss of some false sense of sovereignty!
From the other perspective, if you really want to lighten the fiscal burden of the citizen what better that to begin some business process engineering of our political and governmental system, heck it worked for DoD!.
Europe is still fighting many of the battles we assumed in their effort to federate. The bone of contention for many is the new thick layer of civil servants floating in and around Brussels at taxpayer cost (and they paid dearly to lure them there). But what is happening at a national level is quite interesting if sometimes insidious.
France where I live is going through a multilevel mutation, redesigning it's close to 100 districts (departments) into cantons and broader regions.
Should we begin to rethink the nature of the Union?
Talk about providing the means for a citizen focused America may require addressing these two issues. If we fail these two among other issues we may find ourselves in a historical parallel : the end of Victorian era in Europe.
Finally, the end of the American era may be consolidated by an internal economic implosion. Supply side is gone, mass consumerism will dwindle by necessity, the ever growing “Bush go shopping” locomotive of economic growth is running out of steam as Americans attempt to rebuild through savings a decade of lost wealth. More than ever we need to look towards Europe’ economic models to understand how we are to cope with high unemployment, lower growth and growing societal needs