The US has direly changed since 2004 and not for the better. The UK is a much, much smaller country than the US; what do you think will happen to it on the same time scale?

I'm not saying Cameron will start WW3, but I really am afraid of what will happen.

> The US has direly changed since 2004 and not for the better.

It's complicated.

Since 2004 we're finally getting to the point where some of the insanity put in place in the aftermath of 2001-09-11 is starting to go away.

On the flip side, the ways some of that is being done (see TSA PreCheck, put in place in 2011) are quite odious... but I have a hard time blaming Bush for a policy put in place in 2011.

While I agree that the changes from 2004 to 2008 were fairly negative, the ones from 2008 to 2012 were just as negative if not worse.

All of which is to say that the two major parties were quite happily marching in lockstep toward creating a security state for a while there. I'm glad to see that at least the electorate and the judiciary are now moving in the opposite direction.

Well it's only my dumb opinion but Cameron merely comes in second place to ISIS for this year's entry on the things the media want us to be scared of - previously populated by CJD, Y2K, anthrax, avian flu, worldwide economic collapse, swine flu, Eurozone collapse, North Korea and Ebola.

I'd dare say most Americans think the US is worse today than it was before Bush. While the US isn't under the rule of a dictator, an increasingly large number of people are wary of if not fearful of the government.

People may be alarmist, sure, but when an ever-growing number of people worry about governmental actions, there tends to be some reason for it.

I honestly think you've got blinders on if you believe that. The right track/wrong track polls and congressional approval ratings are usually a good indicator of that - even Obama's meteoric rise couldn't put a dent in the way that people still feel like the US Government is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate america.