It was Reagan, you will remember, who spoke in those soothing tones about 'Tax and Spend Democrats' while driving this country into a debt that was, until Curious George Bush arrived, the largest in this countries' history. It was Reagan, you will remember, who popularized the fictitious meme about "Welfare Queens Driving Cadillacs" while slashing domestic programs deemed to be social welfare. It was Reagan, you will remember, where the term 'homeless' came into the popular vernacular. It was also during this time that the gap between rich and poor began to yawn into gargantuan proportions.

Mark Twain said it best: "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

There was a cause and effect relationship between the rhetoric and the results. Apparently most of us missed that rhyme too.

The malaise that brought on the likes of Reagan had to do with the after affects of the Vietnam War. It too, was a bad time for this country. We had just been defeated by a people who for all we knew were a primitive sort, seemingly incapable of defeating the "Greatest Nation On Earth".

Then, as now, we were paying the price for Empire...American style, thanks to another Republican icon: Richard Nixon, who spent more money in the final years getting us out of Vietnam than did Kennedy and Johnson did getting us in. A physics teacher summed it up best while stepping out of his discipline long enough to tell us that "...firing a 60 thousand dollar mission to destroy a ten cent hut didn't exactly strike him as wise use of resources." That was then, and the missiles now cost millions...and the rocks in Afghanistan are worth considerably less.

The inflation that resulted from that kind of Tom Foolery, along with the trend toward consuming more oil than we produced, was in a word; Devastating. And it was Gerald Ford, who introduced CAFE standards, along with Jimmy Carter and 55 mph, which led to a halving of our voracious appetite and resulted in a fix for gas prices, nearly 15 years later. But you wouldn't have thought Ford or Carter capable at the time. Life is sometimes ironic in it's ability to fool human perception over time.

The problem today is that the people who attended those civics classes are the same one's who continue to defy the reality of out sourced careers, low wage jobs, foreclosed homes, and a deteriorating standard of living that is quickly causing a trading of places with the likes of those we once termed "Third World".

We seem to forget, that as a nation that we have slipped from No.1 in most metrics to anywhere from 16th to 36th in the world when rated on standard of living. I remember a time when it was fashionable to spout off about our rank in the world...That's been some time since...

Yet we continue to believe the right wing bromides and propaganda of yesteryear. Such is the fleeting nature of empire. And such is the wicked irony of perception over time. Can you hear the rhyme?