This started as a comment, but well..

Williams leaves his Laura pretty much as we found her, but that doesn’t mean we can’t discuss her options.
She could go look up the brother’s friend. But he’s married now, has kids, what’s she going to do? Ask him for a job as a domestic servant? Stalk him like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? Start an affair with him, become his mistress who can’t call him at home, spending holidays alone and in tears, while he celebrates with his family, dedicate her life to him in hopes that one day he will leave his wife and marry her, at least until the next pretty girl comes along?

Or she could get out a little more, get to know some people, get a life of her own going away from Mama and those little glass figures, maybe meet someone special, maybe learn a little more about who she is, what she wants out of life and what she has to offer it – and appreciate herself for  enough to stop fixating on that one kiss from someone who has his own life and interests – which do not include her.

Maybe if Laura had somebody else to advise her besides the wacky old mother lost in her own faded roses of days gone by, that person might tell her to forget the notion of making the brother’s friend be what she wants him to be. He has gone his own way, and the best thing Laura can do, might suggest some wise person, is to leave him be and focus on her own self.

US politics is business. It is not the sport of those who will find it difficult to make doubled credit card payments because you maxxed your card out in the first place due to insufficient income.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans are about opposing wars, or war crimes, or European-style social safety nets or a thriving middle class.

There is a reason for that. Those things are less profitable for business. And business is about profit. Politicians are there to serve the corporations, they are not there to serve single mothers who can’t afford medical treatment.

Some people have expectations of the Democrats that are not reality based. The Democratic party’s purpose is not to oppose US policies, but to suggest more cost-effective ways of implementing them, and present them in more palatable terms.

No Democrat is going to come out and be Hugo Chavez del Norte and feed the hungry and house the homeless. It would not be pragmatic. Nor is any Democrat going to oppose profitable “military operations” undertaken by the US to secure its natural resources located in its various properties around the globe. That would not be pragmatic either.

If something like that happened, the individual would be summarily run out of town on a rail, his (or her) political career would be over, and his friends would be thanking God that he got off so easy. He could have had a tragic accident.

Nor is it realistic to suppose that some third party Saladdin is going to come charging up on a white horse and save America. Third parties, are, for all practical purposes, not allowed in the US.

I am not a big fan of Ralph Nader, but when he characterized the Democrats and the Republicans as two branches of the corporate party, he was right.

This is just reality. Another reality is that this is neither a road toward a legitimate democratic government, nor sustainable.

Whether you think it is right or wrong is not relevant. It is just another question of pragmatics.

Yes, there are consequences. The world does have its own security to protect, which it will do, regardless of whether the “exceptionalists” think it has a right to or not.

And you don’t have to go far to see the consequences of not having a middle class. There are countries very near the US where gunmen armed with automatic rifles stand guard over the humblest little grocery store, where houses are surrounded by walls and gates, and tiny children hover in the parking lot of Burger King, peering through the windows, asking for the rest of your fries. Until the guard sees them. One’s status is determined by whether the guards are shooting at the children who ask for your fries, or whether they are shooting at you.

But frankly, if you are going to have trouble paying for private security guards without dipping into your child’s college money, you are not going to be able to pay those guards for very long, and so US politics is not going to be your game for very long.

Now if you are the type who says, oh but I hear the Democrats have a terrific plan to send everybody to college, so I will be able to pay the security guards for maybe two or three years, then for two or three years, you just might be able to help out in the phone bank. Or handing out flyers. And when you need that operation you can’t afford, you can count on the Democrats to wish you all the best, and you can be sure that they will do it much more graciously than the Republicans will.

So is the US doomed? Yes, in the sense that Imperial Russia was doomed, in the sense that the French aristocratic regime was doomed, in the sense that Genghis Khan, and Rome, and yes, Hitler, were all doomed. But these are events that will occur independently from the business of US politics.

When the window for political solution closes, other doors open. It is not pretty, or easy, and does not result in Utopia. Think of it as a market correction, from the domestic point of view, and in the case of the threat US presents to the world, well, the world made a mistake in letting the cancer grow, and the world will correct its mistake, and hopefully learn from it.

That does not mean that US politics cannot be a rewarding avocation. Sure, there will be those who say you are dancing on the Titanic. But if you have already learned that your name is not on the list of those who will be allowed to board the lifeboats, who are those people to criticize?

After all, what else can you do? Storm the lifeboats?