America’s fearsome mega-trends

There is no parallel in history to the [American] experiment of free government on this scale. The scale accounts for a great deal, including ... pessimism about the present or the future of America. —Scottish historian D.W. Brogan in The American Character, 1944

WASHINGTON, DC: Just why is American politics so dysfunctional? One answer is that both parties, for different reasons, have created self-serving mythologies that reward them for not dealing with pressing problems that, though daunting, are hardly sudden or secret.