Hi Walter,
I want to reply to your long message, if I may.
A lot of what you say about American political system is true, unfortunately. The tone of your message, however, is arrogant and condescending, instead of constructive.
But as a person who lived in Eastern Europe and Western Europe (I worked in Italy), and now living in the USA for many year (2 years actually in New Orleans), I can tell you this. If I can make a generalization, based on my experience, american people are BY FAR nicer, more generous, kinder and more warm people than europians. So I guess, these are the choices we make.
"The creative process is nothing but a series of crises." Isaac Bashevis Singer
"My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all." Oscar Wilde
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." W.Somerset Maugham