America’s very very bad, no good week

• 30 American servicemembers killed in one attack in Afghanistan, including members of the Navy Seal team that sent Osama bin Laden to hell. Killed while engaging in a war that America lost any legitimate claim to pursuing long ago.

• The climax of the budget battle embarrassment that ended with America’s credit rating being downgraded anyhow for the first time its founding, based on the perception of “political instability.” Hard to argue with that one.

• The partial shutdown of the FAA due to additional partisan budget bickering, unnecessarily laying off thousands of working-class Americans at a time of unprecedented financial crisis.

George Will just summed it up excellently on ABC’s Sunday morning show: America is collapsing under the weight of its contradictions.

It’s easy to point fingers at the Tea Partiers or the tax-and-spenders or our useless, emasculated excuse for a president and call names, but in the end, it only adds to the sound and fury that is obfuscating the fact that America is quantifiably in decline. Steep decline.

I’m coming to the conclusion that there is no resolution to be had, short of another foreign-born attack on American soil. Nothing less than a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11—a disaster with a clearly-identifiable bad guy, an ‘other’ to focus our rage on—is going to have the purchase to even momentarily distract us from the self-inflicted wounds our country is suffering, and unite us again in common purpose.

God help us.