Republican obstructionism. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/us/politics/06spend.html?_r=0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt-ceiling_crisis_of_2011 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/senate-rejects-obama-budget-republican-alternatives/2012/05/16/gIQAUA3WUU_blog.html http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/30/politics/shutdown-showdown/ http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/03/25/478B-Infrastructure-Bill-Blocked-Senate-GOP This is just in the broad strokes, too. Delving into more of the details reveals just how stupid and short-sighted the Republican strategy has been and what a disaster it's been for this country. What we could have accomplished without them holding us back. To think they actually met in a room when Obama was elected and said 'We're not going to work with this guy at all!' (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-republicans-plan-for-the-new-president/) It sounds like it belongs in some work of satire or a dystopian comedy. The problem isn't merely that Republicans have en masse moved to the right, either. They've scorned facts, reason, knowledge, rational discourse, and the very notion of compromise. For instance, in my own state, the Republican-led legislature opted to 'combat' climate change by banning the use of scientific data (http://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science-rising-sea-level/story?id=16913782) in policy decisions. Back in the national arena, Republicans now blame Obama for refusing to compromise with THEM (http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/gop-theme-blame-obama-114311). It is the height of absurdity, and psychological is a defining aspect of sociopaths (http://angiemedia.com/2010/11/12/sociopaths-in-our-midst-hate-the-truth-and-its-advocates/#.VvLebWH6wx4). Yet people like you all across America eat it up. You keep electing people that are fucking you and lying right to your face. They're fucking us all and you just keep voting them in and telling yourselves stories how things aren't your fault and one day your time will come. In reality we've had 30 years of predominantly Republican-led, rightward shifting (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/12/five-charts-that-show-how-conservatives-are-driving-partisan-rancor-in-dc/) policy-making to turn this country into your supposed utopia, and it hasn't happened. We have internet and smartphones and family sedans with ridiculous amounts of horsepower, yet income inequality is worse than ever, our infrastructure is crumbling, major companies pay no taxes into the systems that support them, and a single accident or illness is enough to force a person or a family into bankruptcy.