With respect -- because I don't know you at all -- I would take issue with your characterization of the U.S. as a nation as "cowed, suspicious, fearful, chauvinistic, nasty."

It's just that the extreme left and the extreme right are both screeching so loudly that they can hear neither themselves, their opposition, nor the great vast majority of people in the middle who simply wish they'd shut up.

[Yeah, yeah, you can't use "neither/no" with three things, but it seemed to fit]