So here we are at the end of the first decade of the 21st century -- penny-pinching Philistines where the arts and education are concerned, procrastinators when it comes to indicting, prosecuting or even raising doubts about malefactors who brag publicly about their malfeasance, more ingoing that outgoing in our social outlook and civic concerns, inured to a daily diet of war and its human tolls, unable or unwilling to challenge the smug morality of the ostentatiously religious and invariably capable of putting in office peevish or undertalented men and women who too often bring the country to its knees.

As Horatio said to Hamlet, "We need no ghost come from the grave to tell us this."

And we don't, of course. It's common knowledge.

BUT DO ALL of these failings bracket themselves in a common framework and come from a single source or philosophy? For the sake of argument, if nothing else, consider two Supreme Court rulings as the bracketing parentheses for events from 2000 to 2010.

The first was Bush vs. Gore in 2000, and the second was Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission 10 days ago. Both were 5-4 decisions, and both involved the same or similar justices in determining the majority decision.

The first permitted the 2000 election to go to George W. Bush, and the second permits corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of in support of their candidates. In the latter case, money would not go to the candidates themselves but to advertising and lobbying and so on. The effect on the voting public would, of course, be the same.

The Bush-Gore decision did not award the election to Bush directly but in effect stopped the vote count in Florida. With the count stopped, George W. Bush was proclaimed president. Affirming that the one-man one-vote principle had been violated, Supreme Court dissenters stated: "Preventing the recount from being completed will inevitably cast a cloud on the legitimacy of the election."

All the above is no secret to Americans nor to those others around the world who closely monitor American elections. Rather than rehash that, let us consider the consequences.

Some say that Mr. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and others in government were impervious to the impending possibility of what actually happened on Sept. 11, 2001. For the moment let us leave that to historians. What is now demonstrably true is that the country was led to war for false reasons that were known to be false at the time.

There followed the human costs -- more than 4,300 American dead and counting, multiple amputees, suicides and the psychologically and physically wounded. The National Guard has been internationalized while the Marine Corps and the Army have been strained to the breaking point.

Then there is the staggering economic cost. Figures abound, but consider the calculation this month from the National Priorities Project (nationalpriorities.org): Following the latest round of congressional appropriations, total war-related spending for Iraq has reached $747.3 billion. Afghanistan clocks in at $299 billion. And there is much, much more to come.

Profligate spending of borrowed money creates a monstrous budget deficit ($1.35 trillion this year) and national debt ($12 trillion and counting). As the economy declines, private and corporate foundations cannot support charities and the arts as they would like (as I have learned from my own experience).

The result in loss for the arts, among other losses in the entire society, is that one arts organization after another disappears.

OF COURSE, OUR governmental largesse toward the arts cannot be much of a model. The 2010 annual budget (reluctantly awarded for the most part) for the National Endowment for the Arts is $167 million.

This is far less than 1 percent -- actually about 0.005 percent -- of the total annual national budget. The cost to the individual taxpayer is 35 cents a year. The federal outlay for what is termed defense (military services plus aircraft, ships, tanks, vehicles) amounts to almost 25 percent of the $3.107 trillion national budget.

President Dwight Eisenhower presciently warned against the growing power of the military-industrial complex. Since then the complex has only grown stronger.

And because weapons and war machinery exist for use in war and grow obsolete when not used, there are many Americans and others throughout the world who are brazen enough to think and ask if the military-industrial complex did not nudge recent administrations toward war as a kind of inevitable excuse to use weapons still in inventory. The Vietnam War, identified as a mistake by its very architects (McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara and similarly branded by a younger and more candid John Kerry: "Who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake?") cost the lives of more than 58,000 Americans alone. For what?

Similarly, in Iraq there was no initial justification, and all those who still believe and say that it was for democracy and not for oil and the security of Israel need a refresher course in realpolitik. Similar invasions to "spread democracy" have a sordid presence in American history from Polk to McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt.

But waging war for the sake of war has never been an true American ideal, and plunging the country into war for covert commercial reasons is something that leaders do at their peril. And yet it seems habitual that men with third-rate minds continue to send first-rate volunteers to fight and die and be maimed in fifth-rate wars.

Now comes (or again comes) Afghanistan. Mr. Obama has called it a "war of necessity," but he has not defined "necessity." The outspoken Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, won his request for a troop surge. If history prevails, we can expect that the 30,000 troops he has been given will be followed by another request, à la Gen. William Westmoreland in Vietnam, for 30,000 more and so on.

American military leaders, including Gen. David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, have been willing to question whether a military victory in Afghanistan is even possible. Ahead of last week's conference in London, Gen. McChrystal suggesting negotiating peace with elements of the Taliban. It's either a mark of desperation or a savvy ploy.

But there is unanimous agreement that the central government of Karzai is corrupt. We're still facing an open-ended unwinnable war to maintain a corrupt government at a cost that will further impoverish our already hard-pressed citizenry while at the same time costing the lives of American soldiers and uncountable Afghans.

Imagine Marine and Army units going into battle with that mantra as their motivation.

THIS ENTIRE 10-year history of profligacy, cowardice and hypocrisy is a matter of dishonorable public record. What does it say about us as a people?

Shall we continue to suffer the consequences of all this lethal folly -- while ignoring or strangling or short-changing those human energies that give us art, drama, literature, dance, music and poetry?

These are the forms of expression that should first and foremost become us as a country and of which they are the deserved and deserving crown. What else but the arts confirms our right to feel what we feel? What else but the arts are capable of showing us who we really are?

Twice in the past decade, the voters have attempted to register their disapproval of the war and other policies regarding torture, wire-tapping, illegal detention and a litany of abuses flowing from a policy of "you are with us or against us." The most recent election was a strong rebuttal of what brought us to this point.

But the voters discovered that many of the policies which they voted against have been perpetuated.

Mr. Obama, who is a lawyer and a former professor of constitutional law, promised to go "where the evidence leads." Many contend that knowingly leading a nation to war under false pretences, ravaging a country and destroying a culture could be identified as high crimes and misdemeanors. But to date that there been little effort to mount an investigation.

What is the result? If justice delayed is justice denied, then injustice ignored is injustice absolved.

This leads to a consideration of the second bracketing parenthesis to the first decade of the new century -- the Supreme Court decision allowing limitless corporate funding in political campaigns.

Justice Anthony Kennedy and his four approving justices said the vote was a victory for free speech. Others saw it as "free speech for sale."

Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking for his dissenting four associates, called this a "radical change in the law ... that dramatically enhances the role of corporations and unions -- and the narrow interests they represent in determining who will hold public office. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."

THE FINAL BRICK has been put in place. It began with the election (?) of George W. Bush -- an elitist concept of government based on money -- not intelligence; on pronouncements -- not persuasion; on raw economic and military power used in the service of special interests and global supremacy.

What happened after the court's decision in 2000 made possible the perversion of American promise for the rest of the decade. What will happen henceforth in political campaigning vis-à-vis lobbyists and the rest will be because of the court's decision in 2010.

In the meanwhile, what has become of us as a previously identified open society? From airport screening to mounted video cameras on street corners, we have become obsessed with "security."

Convincing arguments have been made for the necessity of such oversights (and I for one do not take them for granted), but the effect on our social lives has been to make them more cramped, sour and fouled by the fog of suspicion. Moreover it has made Security Inc. a big and highly profitable business.

As a result, what passes for real love of country is often an affront to patriotism itself -- lapel pins, bumper stickers, flags snapping from car antennae, tattoos on biceps or buttocks, souped-up versions of the National Anthem at sporting events and the tag-line of "God bless America" at the conclusion of speeches whose shallowness insults both God and America.

And anyone who does not conform to this showiness is seen as unpatriotic and suspect. His Socratic crime? Provoking the reluctant pain of original thought when people would rather succumb to wishful-thinking and blindly hope for the better.

AMERICAN CULTURE has shown that it is simply better than this.

If politics continues to fall short of the true ideals of what America means, then politics as usual (with the benefit of corporate largesse as a legal ally) is not what's needed for a regeneration.

Only the arts are capable of doing that.

In October 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Amherst College in honor of Robert Frost. "When power leads man to arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations," he said. "When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. ... The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state."

We do not hear presidential language like that these days, but an "intrusive society" and an "officious state" still need to be confronted by what the arts -- and only the arts -- can offer us so that we can see them for what they are. And act accordingly.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.