In his blog today, Ian Lind, former reporter and still a journalist of the first order, provides an interesting look at three major issues now facing the U.S. Allow me to summarize his summaries:

* The U.S. has anywhere from five to eight times more of its citizens in prison than any other western industrialized nation.

* The U.S. spends more on health care than any other country in the world, but has poorer results than most of those same countries.

* The U.S. spends more on “defense” than all the rest of the world combined.

And still the politicians blather about the U.S. being the greatest country in the world and are outraged at any candidate for office who dares to suggest that some other country may have found a better way to deal with some of these issues.

Propose health care reform and you’re a socialist. Propose more gun control or prison reform and you’re siding with the criminals. Propose a cut in military spending and you’re soft on terrorism.

What’s maddening is that most of those pompous, blowhard politicians know better, but are pandering to (and thereby willfully perpetuating) ignorance and arrogance among the electorate … and all in the name of patriotism.

We’ve got a helluva lot of waking up to do. And we’d damn well better get started on it.

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