Well I disagree about the root problem here.
I'm as anti-Republican as anybody, but our problems are worse than that.
Deep Capture
Our nation has been captured by oligarchs who own our politicians and our media. In fact they own just about everything. They play the left against the right to amuse themselves and to keep us from noticing the men behind the curtain.
The U.S. had military might, a strong industrial infrastructure, and many of the world's leading corporations started here. These factors (among others) made us an inviting capture target. Control of the U.S. = control of a great percentage of the world's resources, access guaranteed by our military. Norway would be far lower on the radar of the corporations. Control of the Norwegian government just isn't as good of an investment.
I acknowledge that we do have a strong rural conservative base that is averse to more socialist-leaning policies, but it is greatly exaggerated and inflamed by the propaganda machine, and the much larger story is that our system has been almost entirely captured by corporate interests who are dead set against the country's human resources getting their hands on any of the loot.
= new reply since forum marked as read