First, an apology.

Over the years in this space I've tackled a broad range of issues — everything from our never-ending wars to religion, gay marriage, illegal immigration and beyond. Lately, though, I've turned into a one-trick pony; the topics here have been almost exclusively economic.

There's a reason for this: It's virtually all I read anymore. It's what's happening. The greatest economic crisis of our lifetimes is also the most important event of our lifetimes, destined to have a profound impact on the way we live, and who we are.

SMART REMARKS: Religious freedom, except near Ground Zero

As such, the culture wars just don't interest me as they once did. That doesn't mean those arguments aren't important — the issue of gay marriage, for instance, forces people to think about freedom and the limits they would impose on it, and for what reasons. But at best, I've come to see these issues as sideshows; at worst, they're intentionally crafted diversions. The Republican drive to repeal the 14th Amendment and rescind the automatic citizenship it confers on people born here is an example of election-year pandering at its most noxious and divisive.

By contrast, the main event, the ongoing economic contraction, is a transformative crisis. I see us coming out of this as a different nation, a different people. And the fight, now, is over what kind of people we will be.

Over the years I have argued that we must be a compassionate society, a nation that recognizes that programs like Social Security and even health care reform are not only beneficial for the impoverished, but for the broader society as as a whole. A rising tide cannot lift some boats, but leave others swamped, if ours is to be a stable, egalitarian, just society.

But more and more I've come to see this as a losing battle. Americans are simply not in a compassionate mood. It's easy to understand why.

As our economy has evolved, it has distorted the very nature of our society. Once upon a time in America you could believe that if you worked hard your wages and standard of living would increase; your kids would live better than you did. All that's inoperative now. The fundamental American promise seems broken. There are many reasons for this — globalization would top my list — but the bottom line is that as a society, we appear to have passed the point of "peak prosperity." Never again will we be as broadly prosperous as we were, or believed we were.

This "believed we were" is key, because we probably reached peak prosperity a decade ago. Since then wages have flatlined, though the housing bubble and easy credit made it easy to ignore this. But now the piper — and Mastercard — must be paid; now prosperity must give way to austerity. Unemployment is likely to remain high, and this will have a profound effect, shaking the confidence of a generation and further crippling our consumption-based economy. At the same time, as we cut social spending, it will reinforce this spiral of newfound destitution; our descent down the far side of the peak prosperity bell curve will quicken.

We are going to be a poorer nation, and Americans aren't going to take this well at all. Prosperity is a birthright, or regarded as such. We'll mourn its passing. Then we'll get angry — even angrier than we are.

"In times like these," wrote author James Howard Kunstler last week, "politics gets very crazy. The public forgets how misled and confused it is and develops vicious certainties that do not necessarily jibe with reality. ... Economics is about to turn dangerously political."

I'm obsessed with economics here because I think it already has.

So buckle your seat belts — the ride has only just begun.