Pessimism is this season's black

There's no denying this truth as we march to the election: people are generally not happy about the direction America is heading. Although the economy will inexorably go through bouts of boom and bust, this recent downturn feels more emblematic of something worse: the beginning of the end of American dominance. It extends beyond a crack in the armor of America's economic dominance; American authority itself is starting to be questioned. The result is a new level of despair in the US, which has yet to reach its nadir.

It all starts with Iraq. How naive does it seem now to believe that we would be welcomed in Iraq with open arms? People genuinely believed that building a democracy would be simple enough under the spectre of America, the world's greatest democracy. Instead, we are sending surges of troops to just tread water. Remember the now ridiculous assertion that Iraq's oil revenues would eventually pay for the war? Remember the promise that WMDs would be found? Instead, we're left with empty promises, Dada-esque rationale from Bush, and billions of dollars in debt.

We all knew sunk costs associated with nation-building on an unwilling nation would eventually catch up with America. Unfortunately for Bush and the nation, the full ramifications of mega-scale deficit spending arrived a year early. What we are dealing with is not a mere crack in the facade, rather the entire foundation is under threat. Here's a laundry list of issues off the top of my head: Chinese control of American financial instruments, housing crisis, credit crisis, record deficit, rising cost of living, rising prices of imported necessities like food, rising gas prices, shrinking paychecks, pitiful dollar, etcetera etcetera etcetera. I'm not an economist and I don't pretend to be, but this sounds like a perfect storm.

Perhaps the worst consequence of these going-ons is the crisis in American confidence. Eternal optimism is as much a part of Americana as apple pie and baseball. It guides our country from a moral standpoint and is the basis of the unique entrepreneurial culture here. Americans can take lumps, but a permanent degeneration in our optimism and confidence in our place in the world would be, by far, the worst consequence of the mess America is currently mired in.