A rare and heady mix, to be sure, but what I eventually
emerged with was this reluctant sense that despite all its horrible faults — My Lai and Guantanamo, water - boarding and drone strikes, not to mention the current American
political polarization
between Occupy and the Tea
Party — empirically speaking, the West has the only viable governmental systems on the planet that comes even close to the practical democracy that will be needed to solve the problem.