“A vague feeling of illness or depression” is how the dictionary defines malaise and with 72% of people in a recent New York Times poll feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction, then I think a sense of malaise is the baseline mood of the masses of people,  along with increasing spikes of anger and mountains of discontent.  But why  expect anything else?
There are thousands of people waiting for hours on foreclosure lines to arenas and ballrooms across the country trying to save their homes, there are the poor and the working class feeling the chill before the onset of poverty and worried to death about their health care, and additionally for the Black community, statistics are issued that the unemployment rate in the Black community is 15%, but if you walk the streets you know that figure for African-Americans, is meaningless.
That fifteen leaves out the pain of lost families and the missed happy moments,  15% would be like full employment for young men and women could have raised happy families and laughed and played.  Instead they are held in separate cells upstate, or locked in battles with the financial legacy of slavery and white affirmative action, and 15% percent does not begin to measure the  emotional pain of what might have been.
Is there really surprise that most folks are not happy with a system of endless money for three wars, tax relief for the rich, but not enough to keep daycare centers open or provide pre-kindergarten slots in Bedford Stuyvesant.
So even though “not caring” is the best they can do, Republicans are insisting, “No!  Don’t just not care, let’s attack!” — and out comes Paul Ryan  who “courageously” goes after the weakest among us, and who intones tax breaks for the rich and cuts for the poor,  and then comes the buffoon for comic relief and rises to the top of the Republican pack.  This kind of phenomenon only confirms the ugly stereotype that some Republicans are not just strange, but crazy as well.
We live in a world where they burn through millions of dollars as though it were  nothing, and the Total Cost of Wars since 2001 standing at $1,185,897,663,509 at the instant I looked, but that did not include Libya, another mess the American character has gotten us into.
The Americans who feel the country is headed in the wrong direction are right, especially when the country is torturing innocent men held at the Guantnamo Bay detention camp, refusing to tax rich people, willing to cut back on education, health and benefits.
The only cure for this is the adrenaline that comes from an activist summer. Frederick Douglass said “Agitate, agitate, agitate.”    And, these days, you can do it all on Facebook.