I suppose it is naive to assume the patriotic PR about the United States being the guiding light of democracy is true. But that myth is the accurate description of the nation I want to call my own. Despite all the technological developments since the Industrial Age, and all the theologizing, philosophizing, and aspirations of building a better world, we are half a step behind our hairy forebears in social development. Our "tribes" are bigger and more subtly defined, but our tribal loyalties are alive and thriving--usually against our own best interests. But the one irreversible fact--at least for as long as all of us alive now will live--is that we're all stuck on one relatively small planet with a finite supply of resources, and an apparently infinitely-expanding population of groups that don't like each other. As long as this is true, we are condemned to follow our basest instincts, and reach the lowest collective depths possible, until we're all doomed. Wouldn't it be a bit more interesting to try something different for a change? Wouldn't it be uplifting to look for reasons to cooperate? To find the things that unite us instead of divide us? Perhaps to find ways that we can work together to find a better way? At the moment I am writing this, the USA is 21 hours from beginning a new administration under Barack Obama. What will happen if he truly tries something different? And what will happen if he doesn't?