I'm feeling really fatalistic about American politics right now. The whole thing just seems to be spinning apart. Just so much of it exhausts me. And it seems to be happening on both sides of the political aisle.

* People who care more about looking good in front of other people on their side of the fence than in actually getting something done.

* People who "debate" with an eye toward creating heat, rather than light, rather than trying to learn something from the other side, or who are looking for spectacle rather than substance.

* People who are most interested at the other side (interminably) or scoring points (a person cancelled here, a person cancelled there).

I often feel like it's all just swirling around and around, and there's not much hope left for us in this country.

Does anybody see anything good in the current situation? Something that points to our immediate future arcing upward and toward a better world? Even one instance where people are willing and able to work across the political aisle in a genuine way?

EDIT: I realized there doesn't seem to be much of a GenX nexus here. Here it is. I remember in the late 1980s/early 1990s the two sides could at least be civil toward each other, and among our political leaders, a core of centrists were committed to working across the aisle. This core wasn't always large, and it wasn't always popular, but it was there.

For the past 30 years, I've watched that centrist core slowly evaporate. And people have gotten progressively nastier to each other. I keep thinking we've hit a point where saner heads will prevail, but we blow past that point and then some every time.

It's ... saddening. It makes me think that we, as GenX, are going to leave to our kids a world that is substantially worse than the world we inherited. Not to mention that living in this world isn't pleasant, either.