I started to write this morning about politics. But after getting through 400 lambasting words for our friends on Capitol Hill and in the White House, I stopped. I just don’t know what good it does for me to pick apart what I think they’ve done to America.

We have so much potential here. And yet we squander it.

What’s worse, our society has become so politically inflamed that we can’t even talk about our differences because, it seems, a lot of people have given up on thinking for themselves and instead prefer to regurgitate what they’ve been told.

“We’ve got to get them there before they come to get us here.”

“Mission: Accomplished”

“You’re either with us, or your against us.”

And all of these intellectual treasures are from the some people who changed the name of French fries, as if that would actually punish the nation that gave us the Statue of Liberty.

So here I go again, barreling down this same road. But this isn’t what I want to say. What I want to say is how frustrated I am that we, as a nation, seem to have screwed things up so badly. Our kids aren’t safe at school. Diseases ravage parts of our society that are hit so hard by disparities in health care. And, for Pete’s sake, we nearly lost an entire American city last year.

But none of it really seems to matter. The mantra is “Stay in power, no matter what.” “Look the other way.” “I don’t recall that conversation.” “Support family values.”

What has happened to this country in the last couple of generations? And why can’t we seem to learn from our past mistakes?

We have so much potential here.