If you were wondering why our country is the way it is, we changed direction 53 years ago, when a young president who had us on the path to world peace and understanding, was taken from us in a conspiracy of hate and greed. Understanding that we all shared this small planet; he gave us the Peace Corps; he signed nuclear test ban treaties; he started us exploring the heavens, sent us to the moon and beyond; he ordered us out of Vietnam; he refused to escalate the Bay of Pigs disaster, an Eisenhower plan he inherited and took full blame for. He moved us closer to the Russians, and he started us down the path of true and full civil rights for all Americans, long, long overdue. It all ended, deliberately, planned, in Dallas.

For the past half century, our nation has pushed forward militarily in too many countries to count, removing leaders we did not like, turning our military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about loose on the world. We have dumbed down our schools, all but eliminated public displays of religious belief and practices, allowed horrific Supreme Court rulings to go unchallenged, allowed our federal government to take over our lives in education and health care, dictating to us how all children will learn, taken over student loans once handled by civilian entities, refused to fix a broken tax code, allowed too many lawyers to flood the workplaces; allowed corporations to operate in violation of our anti-trust laws, and allowed them to bank overseas, avoiding trillions in much-needed taxes at home;, agreed to one-sided international trade agreements that have all but eliminated our in-country manufacturing base to a fraction of what it once was (NAFTA is a disaster, while China continues to flood our country and others with cheap aluminum and steel and so much else). 

Social mores have continue to evolve as always, to the point where anyone who disagrees with a rule, a policy, a law, feels zero obligation to obey it, or work properly to change it, but rather runs into our bewildered courts and screams discrimination, then rampages through our streets rallying folks to their cause de jour. We don't look at each other while out in public any more, much less greet each other. Bad driving is met with gunfire. Our social welfare program has expanded from just a couple of million of us needing and accepting assistance, to some 46m of us on the dole. Our society was never designed for one half to support the other. Our courts are clogged with non-sensical suits. We continue to return politicians to elected office term after term after term, and then wonder why nothing changes, nothing progresses. We elect unqualified people to some of the highest jobs in the land, and then wonder why they make ignorant decisions, mostly by going around Congress and avoiding the very system of checks and balances that was set up in the first place. One of our current presidential candidates was investigated by the very government she hopes to lead, and no one really thinks this is out of the ordinary. Our Constitution doesn't seem worth the old paper it is written on. Family structures are weaker than ever, parents having abdicated their roles to schools, now over-burdened with teaching children absolutely everything. We still refuse to secure our borders, north and south. Go figure.

There really is no surprise that our society is the way it is. When law and order break down, when the courts fail to rule properly, when the system of checks and balances is avoided like the plague by those who took an oath to abide by it, when half a dozen corporations control media content, what we see and read, and when minorities rule (flag displays, religious displays, human sexuality adaptions, HOAs, etc) we get what we have, A lawless society ruled by emotion and violence. Perhaps a Constitutional Convention is needed again, to take our country back from those who would keep it their own.

Regarding our trusty Congress's total refusal yesterday to address the gun issue:

Problem # 1: reps have been in office too long. Thanks to the consistent apathy of the American voter, representation has been allowed to evolve into a career position. This was never the Founding Father's intent.
Problem # 2: Congress is at the root of solving all national concerns. While Americans by their actions cause these concerns to rise, Congress has an existence-long history of doing little to solve much of anything. They remain self-serving blustery masters of corporations.
Problem # 3: The assault weapons bans needs to be put back in place, this time permanently. One of their own took a bullet to her head (Rep. Giffords, no matter the weapon used) and still, no action from her peers. Amazing. Slaughters continue across the country. No action. We track bicycle registrations better, and regulate them harder. No action.
Problem # 4: A house divided cannot stand. Despite being a melting pot nation, we should, we must be able to agree on a whole range of solutions to our multitude of issues. To keep delaying and ranting and raging, instead of rational adult discussion and solving, is the definition of insanity.
For people who complain they can't make it on $170k annual salary and some really good benefits, their inactivity and refusal to act, is astonishing. It should be embarrassing to them.

Watching a once great society disintegrate: divisive, violent, angry, drug-addled, law-rationalizing, unable to disagree politely, gun-happy, near-immune to all manner of violence and the unspeakable; always offering prayers and open hearts, yet uncaring about what their kids are doing with video games, nearly all of them violent, after having left them in day care all day long. Anti-government interference, yet reluctant to vote out those who cause it all. Unable to put down their cell phones and devices in order to get from Point A to Point B safely, no matter the means.
Religious tolerance all but gone. Once great schools that helped generations aim for the stars and beyond, now abandoned for mostly segregated private schools. Nationwide high school graduation rate somewhere in the 70 % range, meaning almost 3 in 10 students fail to graduate. The remainder turn out to be an embarrassment to their new college professors in the fall, unable to to write a sentence, construct a paragraph, spell it all correctly, or do simple h.s. math.
Sigh.