Stephan:   This is what is so dangerous. Two thirds of voters see America in decline. We have put ourselves at enormous risk, and it is entirely self-inflicted. The defeat of the jobs bill, because Republican voted as a bloc, is an example of that mutilation. Sadly, I have increasingly come to feel all of this is both inevitable and necessary. We need a new paradigm. We need to adjust our system so that it places the wellbeing of all beings and Gaia herself first and profit second. Paradigms are not surrendered easily though. It is going to be a messy painful business, just as it was in the 1870s when many nation states, including Germany and Italy, emerged. But as people surrender their expectation that the system they are living under is improving their lot, their ties to it will weaken.