I share your "nauseous foreboding" completely. I, too, used to just LOVE politics - following the tussle between the two parties, taking an interest in what's going on. I thought that, for the most part, both parties had legitimate competing ideas that were worthy of debating (even though I almost always took the liberal side).

Today, though, I am finished with it. We aren't going by the constitution any more, yet we carry on as though we are. Plus, the conservative movement is doing things that injure the country at every turn - and they see this, but still won't back down.

My wife - who used to be an optimistic, almost tom-boyish adventurer and conservationist - has been completely propagandized by her ghoulishly conservative mother and is now in cynical lock-step with the tea party perspective on EVERYTHING. It's to the point where she blames Obama and liberals for everything she sees wrong, whether it has anything to do with the liberal/conservative axis at all - stuff like seeing kids misbehaving in public. ("It's that permissive, liberal 'if-it-feels-good-then-do-it' philosophy that Obama and liberals promote...". She's transformed. She's not the same person I married.

I blame the Cons for their new found radicalization, and the Libs for a complete lack of backbone to counter the Cons.

America as we knew it in more optimistic times is over. We're turning the corner into something new. And ugly. The next phase of America - a declining phase - has begun.