Dichotomy

We're stuck in a recession, countries are defaulting on debt, China is buying up our debt, global warming is threatening to kill us all, Iran may be going nuclear, and North Korea is stirring something up-maybe.

No big deal.

Right?

Well, I mean, the US isn't really taking any sort of action, so these issues are probably small and will probably away.

...No.

We're on the brink of disaster (or perhaps we've already fallen off the brink), and our government won't do anything. Why? As you probably know, we have a Democratic president and a Republican Congress. And that's about it. We're done.

Democrats have one set of policies, goals, and ideas, and Republicans have an another set of goals (which involves blocking anything that Democrats stand for). As that stands, nothing is going to get done, because Republicans can use their majority in Congress to block anything from getting passed. No tax increases on the wealthy, no more stimulus, no nothing. To be fair, the Republicans have been making suggestions. These suggestions involve the removal of policies that Obama has put in place. Suggestions that were supposed to help us.

Obama has tried to compromise with the Republicans (or so it appears, anyway, although Obama isn't rolling back his previous policies, that's for sure). This compromise results in watered down bills that won't do much to help the economy. It appears as though his compromising and policies, while not really gaining Republican support, are alienating some of his Democratic base.

In short, the split between the two parties is so large, the animosity between the two parties so great, that even when they claim to have the same goal (i.e. help America), they beat each other up and block each other's actions. And we are desperately in need of some Federal action at this point (the Federal Reserve can only do so much; interest rates are already basically at zero, and the Fed is buying bonds to inject money into the economy. There's not much more that can be done with monetary policy. We need some fiscal policy now.). Otherwise, we're goners.