Mandals wrote:

I have some issues with his stewardship, but I also think I should have realized sooner that nothing good, legislatively-speaking, could have survived this generation's Congress.

Bush being so hilariously awful obscured a lot of the problems, from being thoroughly beholden to industry lobbyists, to being full of grand-standing morons. Now that we have a halfway competent executive, the problems with Congress are more apparent.

As for whether this will get better? History points to no. The only thing that pulls empires out of slides is a strong, authoritative ruler e.g., Justinian, something that won't happen within the current loosely-democratic framework. Congress would have to become wholly toothless before you'd see any real reforms, which would be great for those issues, but would also mean the abrogation of representative democracy.

In other words, we're fucked. We have two options. Option A) we continue down a long, slow decline for the next 50 years or so until things get bad enough to foment a revolution or we enter into captivity to some other nation-state.

Option B) a charismatic and authoritarian ruler emerges, one who does away with the fiction of democracy and improves the lives of the citizens via meaningful and profound reforms, but who by the same token consolidates power into a single personage or office and restricts opposition.

Which would bring us firmly into Philosopher King territory, a development with both good and bad repercussions. It's good if the king is benevolent and tolerant and wise e.g., Augustus, and super-fucking-horribly-bad if you get stuck with someone like Nero or Caligula. (Although I personally think Nero wasn't so much bad as outlandish).

My guess, given humanity's penchant for messiah figures and its tendency to "elect" nutjobs to power, is that we're going to see another generation of gradual decline, increased unrest, a Cold Civil War and limited application of martial law, followed by the emergence of a charismatic populist who will seize power from a greatly-weakened state and use that power to take control of the reins of government.

THEN we'll get single-payer, THEN we'll get less insane laws, THEN we'll get real financial reform and relief.

And then, while we're enjoying that and saying "hey our king is a pretty cool dude this isn't so bad after all," he'll die suddenly and control will pass to his son who will turn out to have a thing for rape, sports cars, high taxation and execution squads.

Wait 200 years after that, and we'll have democracy again.