I don't know whether to blame eight years of Obama or not but something has turned this once wonderful country into a tragic-comic banana republic. We have a manic millionaire and a megalomaniac liar running for the presidency; five cops are gunned down in a protest; black people are gunning each other down at an alarming rate and people can't seem to grasp why cops lead off encounters with blacks with guns drawn; our schools are cranking out semi-literate graduates and the middle class is vanishing.