FROM THE HILL, EVIDENCE OF OUR DECLINE

Now that Billy Jeff has succeeded so handsomely in his scheme to bait the
Republican Party into self-destructing, it's time to begin the inevitable,
endless process of figuring out the Meaning of It All.

It isn't all bad; there are collateral benefits to be found in the nation's
long ordeal. People of good heart are delighted at the prospect of such
God-awful Neanderthals as Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) trying to live up to their
new-found roles as guardians of the right of women to be legally protected
from sexual harassment.

And surely it will be diverting to witness the manic fratricide among
Republicans driven mad at seeing their hated quarry escape. The carnage
over "Who Lost China?" won't be a patch on the blood that will be shed when
the GOP starts eating itself up over who let Clinton get off the hook.

But, come on, that's the fun stuff. What's the big picture? What dreary
portents will the op-ed heavies be stroking their whiskers over (and most
still have whiskers) for the next decade or so?

A sensible observer might suggest that maybe it just doesn't mean a lot
after all, that the essential obstinate good sense of the American people
will put things to rights and the whole squalid mess will soon be
forgotten. But no one fated to write commentary for a living would fall
into any such trap; the temptation to puree the dismal episode into some
pellucid essence is just too great. If one can't discern great historic
trends before they happen, better one should be selling real estate, which
in this market surely must pay more.

So here is what it is Really All About: The impeachment and trial of the
nation's 42nd president mean that America's transformation into a banana
republic is essentially complete. We're strong and rich, yes, but in every
other particular we are becoming indistinguishable from the most
pestilential backwater ever to be misrepresented in a travel brochure.

Proofs of our decline abound:

Our Congress is a shambles of mean-spirited, impotent partisan bickering,
and our chief executive is what cultivated people once called a blackguard.

There was a time when one had to travel to marginal countries in the
tropics to find state-sponsored gambling, but no more. Our sainted republic
is riddled with lotteries, which prey upon the poor and unwary, and more
and more states are becoming partners in the casino business, once a
monopoly of gangsters.

The debasement of our language is a scandal -- Dale Bumpers using
"decimate" when he means "devastate." Our schools are a disgrace, our
culture is a joke, our media is turning into one loud cable/Internet/talk
show harangue, our children are debauched with television that would cause
revulsion in a Scranton parlor house, and law-abiding motorists are at risk
of murder at the hands of hot-rodders, whose right to bear arms will, with
any luck, be defended to the death by Messrs. Barr and the rest of the Gang
of 13. We are two nations, bitterly divided by race and class, with great
wealth concentrated in the hands of few and great poverty condemning the
lives of many.

Tell me about our great advances in medicine, and I will tell you that no
country that aspires to greatness, or even to civilized mediocrity, could
live with itself when 40 million or so of its citizens were denied medical
care. We spent $40 million proving that Bill Clinton is a donkey (to put it
politely) -- and proving that it takes one to know one. Yet, prenatal care
is a luxury denied many of our penniless teenage mothers-to-be.

Serious historians of the future, if they bother with us at all, will
marvel at the naivete of a country that watched in helpless paralysis as
its monstrous criminal justice system squandered billions of dollars on a
cruel, vindictive and wholly futile "war on drugs," long after civilized
nations had concluded that the only solution was to treat the scourge of
chemical addiction as the socio-medical problem it is.

And it is true enough that we have the prettiest, most telegenic generals
seen in public since the guys got all spiffed up in their saber-rattling
best for the Napoleonic wars. But plainly such tin-pot tyrants as Saddam
Hussein and Slobodan (perfect name here) Milosevic are not impressed by
campaign ribbons. We can build great ships and airplanes, but our military
bureaucrats would make Mr. Lincoln's War Department look like an encampment
of strategic geniuses.

The new currency is an abomination.

Are we truly doomed to suffocate in self-serving, mendacious spinnery from
the arch-cynic in the White House and the pious yokels in Congress? Is the
once-great Republican Party condemned to die at the hands of the nutty right?

A song from a second-rate musical sticks in my mind. It was called
"Whatever Happened to Class?" and I wonder if I was listening to the
requiem for our wonderful land when I heard it.

Trying to describe the trip when you're aboard a train car careering down
the tracks to perdition is beyond the powers of all but the grandest travel
writers. But surely this much can be noted in passing: There was never a
country on Earth so rich as ours in the promise of social justice for its
people, or so powerful in its potential to do good in a tormented world,
that has been so determined to fritter away the opportunity. And that is
sad. Sad beyond words.