For seven years, congress has done relatively little regarding the very serious problems we face, such as a failing economy for the middle class, a war that we are bogged down in and where we are at the mercy of powerless Iraqi government that sides with Iran, a looming social security crisis, an educational system that is failing the middle class, stagnant wages and falling home prices, and healthcare costs going through the roof . . . while HMOs, drug companies and the AMA are rolling in dough, and while gasoline, college costs, and food prices are skyrocketing.

We can't do anything about these problems because of a division between ideologies; the left and the right. Special interest groups keep it that way, and Obama understand this.

The extreme factions of both the left and right have been programmed to hate each by special interests, pundits, and politicians, and though we aren't blowing each other up just yet, if things keep going the way they are, which involves ever more hateful attitudes toward those who disagree with us, it's just a matter of time before violence actually erupts in this country. Is this what we really want; killing each other? Then the terrorists will become us.

Obama gets it. He is unusual, visionary. He understands that our only hope is the middle class coming together, regardless of our differences. But he faces an uphill battle. The old politics of division and hate, the politics that have gotten us into this intractable situation where nothing is being done, is still admired by the vast majority of Americans; the idea that you fight for what you want and you smash your adversary.

And that works, and it has worked for the last seven years . . . but it hasn't worked. What happens is that you eventually destroy each other, and this is happening as we slowly destroy our country. It began simply enough with a few pundits using conflict, dissention and division in order to get TV and radio ratings, but now the hate is everywhere, even on our highways where we are becoming a country of road rage haters, not much different from the terrorists that we are supposedly fighting.

Terrorists hate each other's ideologies, systems, religions, or the color of each other's skin, or the way their adversary talks, or the way they dress. This is the old way, the old consciousness, the behavior that has kept warfare going far past its logical conclusion that warfare doesn't work . . . if it did; there would no longer be wars. This is the way of neurotic desire, of wanting it to go our way regardless of whom we have to kill.

We just don't get it yet. But we, as human beings, are slowly waking up. We can no longer force our ideals on anyone, because the harder we push, the more we get pushed back. The old idea that we can conquer someone as a finality is immature, because all triumphs are temporary and everything changes. The suggestion that once we get everyone on our page, the world will be wonderful is only an illusion. There are no final solutions, only constant vigilance, and awareness.

Continuous, tedious conciliation and compromise are the only answers. The world's problems, and our problems here at home, will never be solved by brute force. Unrestrained, unregulated capitalism, hated by the extreme left, has many times killed off the middle class, leading to anarchy.

And unbridled socialism, hated by the extreme right, has many times led to tyranny, because of a passive populace. The genius of our founding fathers is that they understood the strengths and weaknesses of both systems, and made sure that both would be represented by our constitution. Both socialism and capitalism must be involved, without tyranny, if our fledgling union is to survive for more than a few hundred years.

Our country is still an experiment. Two hundred and fifty years is a drop in the bucket compared to cultures such a China and India that are thousands of years old. Yet we egotistically think that we know everything and refuse to learn from other societies. We don't see that we are still feeling our way, and that we are now at a crossroads. Will we go the way of another Civil War among the left and the right, between the middle class and the wealthy, or will we compromise before it comes to that?

At times, when tyrants invade peaceful people, or when tyrants deal in slavery as in our Civil War, it is necessary to wage war. At other times, we can be an example to tyrants of how a society can live in peace and prosperity without tyranny. The trick is knowing how to approach the uncountable tyrants in this world, and the wisdom to know that a people must have the gumption to fight for themselves. Otherwise, if they are more interested in selfish money and power rather than justice and equality, there is nothing we can do for them, and trying to help them is like pushing on a string, or catching a falling knife.

The Chinese are tyrannical regarding Tibet, and threaten to become so with Taiwan, but we don't mess with China. Nixon and Kissinger knew that warring with China wouldn't work; China is too powerful, so they figured that if China could become rich enough, they might think twice before risking it all over a nuclear war with America. And they were right; Nixon went to China. Little did Nixon realize that if you create a monster, you must feed it; otherwise it will eat you!

A tyrant like Saddam Hussein could have been handled differently as well, because now Iran will have a green light once we leave Iraq, which we must eventually do because our presence in the Middle East is not sustainable in the numbers of troops and cost required. With globalization taking hold, we no longer have that kind of money. How could we ever consider a prolonged war with China, or Russia, when we can't even conclude a war with a tin pot dictatorship like Iraq? Bush, like a schoolyard bully, was keen to attack Iraq, and incidentally make a lot of money for oil people close to him, and the military industrial complex, but his tail becomes tucked firmly between his legs when it comes to China. Obama knows and knew this.

The only answer to keeping a lid on nuclear weapons is negotiation, which means not always getting exactly what we want, but hopefully keeping nuclear weapons at a minimum. Already, India, North Korea, and Pakistan, a country full of terrorists, have nuclear weapons. Can we afford to attack these countries to rid them of their nuclear weapons before they attack us? No, we can't; we can't afford it in treasure and lives, nor in the enemies that we would make with Russia and China. Negotiation is the only answer. It will be either a nuclear war with China and Russia, or negotiation with Iran. Obama knows this.

But one who is a compromiser and conciliator appears weak to immature minds. His voice is drowned out like an aggressive, barroom full of drunks drowning out sanity, and therefore will barely have a chance to make his case known before he is picked apart, ridiculed and defamed. Only very mature societies understand compromise and use compromise successfully to peacefully co-exist with the rest of the world, and we are not there yet. We still unleash our military power at the slightest provocation, like a brawler who swings because he has run out of intelligence.

As an example, notice the character attacks, the negative advertising, and everything on TV that skirts the real issues of the middle class, and how a few influential groups manipulate the masses in America by diverting their attention from the inequities that make the special interest groups lots of money, while killing off the middle class. It's so obvious. Few can see this, however, but Obama does.

For these reasons, the chances of him winning the national election, are slim, and I'm afraid that we will continue to hate and neutralize each other in congress. This means that nothing will get done until a crisis occurs, such as the housing crisis, which means that we will be living in constant fear of the next shoe dropping. Our country will become reactive instead of proactive, paralyzed and crisis driven, our finger on the trigger, putting out fire after fire until the fire finally consumes us in a nuclear war.

This is living in stupidity. This is living in unawareness. This is hiding behind trumped up issues to divert our attention, like religion in schools, gun control, same sex marriage, and abortion . . . while our kids can't go to college, we can't put gas in our cars, we are losing all of our equity in our homes, we are losing our healthcare to exorbitant prices, (the best healthcare system in the world until we lose our jobs or the HMO decides to drop us), we can barely afford our food bills.

And all the while large corporations, the American Medical Association, HMOs, drug companies, bogus mortgage companies, finance companies that are strapping our kids with impossible college debt . . . are all rolling in our hard earned money.

Obama understands this. And if we are middle class Americans, and we don't understand all of this or understand who we are, then we may vote the way we did last time. When all we have left is our ideology; no home, no job, no food, then the reality of who we really are, which is a middle class American, will become evident. It is almost evident now, but I'm afraid that we might have to wait another four years, maybe eight, before the pain becomes widespread enough for middle class Americans to find their identity, and see who the culprits really are. And who really runs congress.

E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center, http://www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com His twenty-nine years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers. Visit http://www.AYearToEnlightenment.com