I’m tired of the bureaucratic mind, the nonsensical spin, the feeble explanation, the robotic bickering, the unwillingness to face reality.

I’m tired of political leaders of both parties who stick to talking points, politicians who won’t answer the questions they’re asked, government leaders who withhold the full story from the people they supposedly represent, citizens who don’t expect much of anything from their elected representatives.

I’m tired of reality TV that is anything but, sitcoms that fail to generate genuine laughs, predictable dramas and sexually driven programs that have all the sensuality of a Sunday New York Times lingerie ad.

I’m tired of presidents who speak in witless clichés and voters who aren’t smart enough to know that they’ve been had when it comes to tax policy, war, the environment and any of a dozen other issues that affect our futures.

I’m tired of news reporters, especially of the local TV variety, who are too gutless or vapid to ask tough follow-up questions and fail to do the homework that provides the context to thoughtful questioning.

I’m tired of news media operations that believe that 30 percent profit margins are acceptable in a business that is a public trust, so they strangle news organizations by cutting newsroom staff, dramatically slicing the quality of local, national and international news.

I’m tired of living in a nation where self-interest and narcissism are viewed as healthy extensions of a capitalist economy, and a commitment to public service is seen as a throwback to a silly, bleeding heart past.

I’m tired of a callous, uncaring president who is many things but certainly no man of the people and yet he is viewed as an average guy who clears brush and understands our daily plight while walking about his insulated world, arms askew like a kid who’s done one too many lat pulls at Gold’s Gym.

I’m tired of an opposition party that doesn’t have the ability to articulate a caring, thoughtful agenda that reaches out to the average guy it claims to represent.

A great nation, a truly great nation is willing to listen and think and question and study and ponder and adjust its beliefs and start the process again. And yet in today’s world of self-righteousness and priorities gone awry, we are stuck with the government that we deserve and a spree of corporate misdeeds that largely go unpunished.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and yet I fear that an increasing number of people grow alienated each day. They’re dropping out of the political and economic process, leaving the decision making to the power elite who care little about the average person who is trying to survive on a blue- or white-collar income derived from jobs that are largely disappearing overseas.

We’re still a great nation, one that I deeply love, one I’m proud to live in, and yet we’ve lost so much of our soul since Jack Kennedy asked us to sacrifice on behalf of this country. George Bush has failed us greatly in this regard. So too has Sen. Harry Reid, the Democrat’s top man in the Senate. They may offer their own brand of talking-point-driven spin, but do most of us honestly believe that they represent our interests? Has either man asked most of us to sacrifice much of anything since the September 11 attacks or the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

That ill-thought-out photo of George W. flying over New Orleans last week, looking out from an Air Force One window at the devastation below said all we need to know about a government run amok. The boy prince was flying overhead, offering nothing for the people who were pleading for water and food and meds.

We can do better. We must do better. But the political system is broken. Democrats and Republicans have let most of us down. We have let ourselves down. And that’s never been clearer than in recent days. To those who say it’s not time for finger pointing, I ask you, when is it time?

As soon as the Gulf Coast disaster fades from the nation’s front pages and is replaced on cable news by stories about the latest missing white woman, it will be too late for healthy self-analysis. We can do both: question the relief failure of recent days while providing food and water and clothing and shelter to those in need.

I’m so damned tired of it all. We must demand more. We can do better. In an age of terrorism, anything less is thoroughly unacceptable and God forbid, some day the results could be even more horrific than what we’re seeing in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.