Here is a fairly short, 25 minute overview of the American political landscape that Thomas Frank delivers in The Shaw Address in Australia.
He urges them not to go down a similar path in 'this low, dishonest age.'
"Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."
Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States, 1928