"Your dearest wish is for our state structure and ideological system never to change, to remain as they are for centuries. But history is not like that. Every system either finds away to develop or else collapses."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote that in 1974, in his famous "Letter to the Soviet Leaders." But it could just as easily be addressed to President Barack Obama, Congress, members of the media, corporate chiefs, and others who lead and maintain the power structure in the United States.

The U.S. is as ossified as the USSR was before its collapse.