Barking mad!

It was very sad to see Americans on TV barking at each other over health care reform. They really seem to hate each other. One young man yelled at a 50-something stranger that she was too old to survive under Obama's system. There are lunatic claims that public provision is nazism or communism - or both!

The town-hall meeting looks like anything but democracy, more like a lynch-mob. There seems to be no procedure, no formal proposing and opposing of a motion, just a roomful of people shouting at the tops of their voices. How can you have democracy when people won't even let each other speak, let alone listen to what they say.

I begin to despair of America. Perhaps the only way to save the world from its excessive weight is for the US economy to collapse. It used to seem that sooner or later there must be a run on the dollar, but no country dares to sell some of its dollars for fear of seeing the rest lose their value. And one of Saddam Hussein's 'crimes' was wanting to be paid for oil in euros.