Why are you so sour these days my good friend?
Simply put, I am quite worried that the US will plunge into an abyss.
If one compares things such as total household debt as a function of household income, or total goverment debt as a function of GPD, or a chart of housing prices NOW to a chart of stock prices before the depression...
The consequences are stark.
And in the 1930's, we were a young nation, with much growth and modernization to do.
Now the boomers are facing retirement, having indulged every fancy and an artificially (debt-based) high lifestyle, accustomed to getting what they want, and a government willing to mortgage the future to pay for short term wants of the indulged *now*.
Other similarities to the 1930's:
We face a rapidly-arming totalitarian state, and pretend that appeasement will work.
Like the 1930's there is a strong racial component to the dreams of our enemies.
And we no longer have the manufacturing base.
The "arsenal of democracy" is now located in our enemy's home country, and they have been supplying *us*.
We are outnumbered 3-1 in population, and no longer have the vast technological lead we once did.
I regard these things as ominous: Depressions and World Wars (like most calamities) remind me of ditzy teenagers in slasher flicks. You're watching (from decades' distance, or from your movie seat), seeing the fatal mistakes made which were in retrospect Oh-So-Obvious ("DON'T OPEN THAT DOOR! THE BAD GUY IS IN THERE. DON'T YOU HEAR THE SOUNDTRACK?!!") or ("Don't borrow to speculate in stocks! Appeasement of dictators doesn't work!"), and you wince. But to the people who lived through them, the mistakes weren't obvious until it was too late. Depressions and wars destroy entire generations' lives -- not just the standard of living, but deep psychical scars which last for decades. Two world wars and a depression in successive generations turned the Europeons into the eternal Diplomatists that they now are, and have set them up for usurpation by bloodless demographic conquest by Islam. (The US only lost 250,000 in World War II, not millions.)
That would be bad enough, but the reason for the "NO CHEERS" is that during these perilous times, the US seems to be fulfilling the Biblical phrase, "And a little child shall lead them." Everything mistakenly said about Palin being a lightweight fluff with no character, appears to be actually true of the sitting President.
Kyrie Eleison!
/rant finished>