Used to be that, well, things were easy to understand.  The cowboy wearing the white hat in the western was the good guy, and the cowboy wearing the black hat in the western was the bad guy.  Then, suddenly, everybody in town started wearing these dingy grey hats, and it became impossible to tell who was good, or who was bad, or even who was sometimes good, some of the time.
 
In the grey hat era, Democrats in America told you they were looking out for the best interests of the little guy, but then whored all those little guy tax dollars out to giant corporations.  Greyhat Republicans in America didn't even bother lying about the whoring, they just cleverly convinced you that it was in your best interest to get screwed over.  Greyhat American Greens often cared more about enforcing a socialist agenda than about the environment they purported to want to protect.  Greyhat Libertarians seemed to be the most sincere, because they at least admitted to not give a hoot about anything beyond each's individual advancement, even though they couldn't quite resolve the paradox of how to get something for nothing when nobody else is contributing either. 
 
Now, however, we seem to be emerging from the Greyhat era.  The lines between party and ideology are beginning to blur, to shimmeringly diminish, as if when the earth's magnetic field reverses polarity.  Where will the political magnetic field realign itself to?  It's not easy to divine that, not yet.  

But it's for sure that most folks have had it with the current Bush administration, and that most folks have had it with the Clintons, as well.  The principled and ballsy Jim Webb walked out on the Republicans, the golem-like Lieberman was waterboarded by the Democrats and arose Independent, and legislation fundamental to our progress as a nation is getting passed in a bi-partisan manner.   There's a Republican governor in California, and he endorses a Republican for the US Presidency, yet he is taking on the EPA to get higher fuel efficiency standards onto the playing field. 

Meanwhile, American democracy seems to be shaking itself awake after a deep, long slumber.  More Americans are heading to the polls in the primary elections than ever have in my lifetime.  And!  Those who were formerly praised for taking extremely aggressive and often inflammatory stances for their respective causes are being exposed as parasites who feed off of cultural divisions for their own personal gain -- two examples that immediately come to mind are Rush Limbaugh on the right and and Julian Bond of the NAACP on the left. 
 
So then.  Why is this all happening right now? 

Well, at first glance it would seem that things just had to get bad enough.  We've been grievously attacked in the financial heart of the Big Apple, we've had not one but two brutal foreign wars ongoing for years now, our economy seems to teeter upon a precipice, we sure don't trust the water we drink and hardly trust the air we breathe, and we're gradually auctioning off our civil liberties, one by one. 

But all that stuff is just the trigger that got pulled.  The shot being fired on American soil is once again being heard around the world. 

As the man with pointy teeth said, "We're not going to take it anymore".  And in another's sage advice, we have decided not to "believe the hype".  We've had time now, and we've had long enough to see the consequences.  We gave Clinton a chance for 8 years, and he balanced our budget in the short term, but did so in part by giving us NAFTA, which has ended up disastrously for our own workers here in America in the long term.  We gave Bush a chance for 8 years, and unless we really shake things up, we're going to be in debt to China until my grandchildren have grandchildren. 

We recognize that we are still the great superpower and that our success is deeply entertwined with that of the world -- as our economy goes, so goeth the world economy.  We are also the most fantastically innovative culture the world has yet seen -- we not only formed our own type of government, we gave the world the automobile, and a new verb:  google.

So that's that. We're still the same country, no matter where the political realignments finally settle down.  America is growing up now, that's all.    Seems to me like, in this land, the free and the brave are standing up.  So all pretenders can step aside, because we're going with McCain and Obama, the Mavericks.  Because that truly is the American way.