THIS TWILIGHT ZONE PRESIDENCY

Imagine if we had a serious president:

SOMEWHERE, in a parallel universe, real leaders in a country very much like our own are dealing with real problems. Imagine what America might be like if our top officials were addressing the genuine challenges that confront us.
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In a decade, historians will ponder how the American people could possibly have reelected a president who lives in a fantasy world and who is doing such damage to the real world.

The poet e.e. cummings wrote, at the end of a fine poem lamenting the condition of humankind, ''Listen, there's a hell of a good universe next door. Let's go." We, alas, don't have that option. We have to bring sanity to the world we are living in.

"America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You've got to want it bad, because it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say, "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil who is standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the 'land of the free'? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the 'land of the free'...This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your 15 minutes are up."-- Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) in The American President