A View From Abroad

A Der Spiegel editorial questions what similiarities exist between Europe and the U.S. (via nc links):

America has changed. It has drifted away from the West.
The country's social disintegration is breathtaking. Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz recently described the phenomenon. The richest 1 percent of Americans claim one-quarter of the country's total income for themselves -- 25 years ago that figure was 12 percent. It also possesses 40 percent of total wealth, up from 33 percent 25 years ago. Stiglitz claims that in many countries in the so-called Third World, the income gap between the poor and rich has been reduced. In the United States, it has grown.
Economist Paul Krugman, also a Nobel laureate, has written that America's path is leading it down the road to "banana-republic status." The social cynicism and societal indifference once associated primarily with the Third World has now become an American hallmark. This accelerates social decay because the greater the disparity grows, the less likely the rich will be willing to contribute to the common good. When a company like Apple, which with €76 billion in the bank has greater reserves at its disposal than the government in Washington, a European can only shake his head over the Republican resistance to tax increases. We see it as self-destructive.
The same applies to America's broken political culture. The name "United States" seems increasingly less appropriate. Something has become routine in American political culture that has been absent in Germany since Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik policies of rapprochement with East Germany and the Soviet Bloc (in the 1960s and '70s): hate. At the same time, reason has been replaced by delusion. The notion of tax cuts has taken on a cult-like status, and the limited role of the state a leading ideology. In this new American civil war, respect for the country's highest office was sacrificed long ago. The fact that Barack Obama is the country's first African-American president may have played a role there, too.

There are a lot of good points in here.  We are definitely having difficulty in this country agreeing about what is the path we should take to improve our current condition.  It is interesting hearing an opinion from outside of the country, but I'm afraid the message won't make much of an impact here.  Nothing riles up an American like hearing a foreigner criticize us.  That's one of the reasons we have so many problems.   Belief in American Exceptionalism is pretty standard in many parts of the country, and admitting that we might not be the best at something is unacceptable to many folks.  I hate to tell them, but we aren't the best at very many things these days, other than being fat and wasting too much fossil fuel-based energy in our lives.  It isn't a good place for us to be, and the upcoming Republican campaign for president will highlight that effectively.