I have, for several years, been attempting to Write. Not merely to give voice to my ideas but to expose them to the iron discipline of imposed order without which they cannot be placed upon paper, and then to shine upon them the cold light of critical review that is required before such ideas may by found to have -- or not have -- any validity outside of my own cranium. After years of failed diaries and journals, I hit upon the context of sending annoying (to them) emails to a couple of the most important gentlemen in my life.
After the latest afternoon walk up Talcott Mountain with one of those long suffering persons, I suddenly realized that, even to those closest to me, I am still the part that doesn't quite fit. I was overplaying Cassandra to their essential Pollyannas, and I immediately applied digits to keyboard to tell them so. AB (adopted brother) has still not responded; RB (real brother) immediately jumped upon Cassandra's gift of prophecy, without perceiving that my focus was upon her sounding well-found alarm -- and being ignored. I claim no prophecy, but I've heard the din that is contemporary communications and have parsed out reasons for concern. I've searched multiple inputs and examined source documents where they are to be found -- and landed in significant opposition to my brothers on several important issues. They will not engage; I shall therefore stop bothering them but rather to look elsewhere for nourishment.
* * *
I am an American. I was born in Hartford in 1947. Ponder that. In 1947, there were not a lot of places other than North and South America that had not entertained all four horsemen of the Apocalypse. (And, though mostly much less violently, the lights were going out in this hemisphere as well.) I still live in awe that I was so uniquely located. I was raised and taught by persons who still recognized that America was the greatest country on the planet, that American arms and blood had twice in living memory rescued the supposedly civilized world from itself and that American ingenuity and energy were in every way making the world a better place.
Upon reaching college I was learning that there were problems but that we could address them; I learned in horror about Jim Crow and lynching -- and watched both destroyed. I read of the Cuyahoga River Catching fire and of paint percolating out of the ground at Love's Canal -- and read of the monumental effort to halt and reverse the most serious environmental outrages. And I remember sitting in a folk emporium in New York with some of my friends. They wanted Dylan's latest, I asked for "This Land is Your Land." To much snickering, I got it -- and neither I nor the snickering friends nor (as far as I know) the smug musician had any idea that the song in question is more than a little Bolshie. (The last few verses are seldom heard.)
That stuff I learned in school. Inalienable rights. One nation under God. Liberty and Justice for all. It made us the greatest country on earth. What at that time was the late greatest country on earth? Britain. Went -- in two generations -- from an empire upon which, literally, the sun never set, to a barely second-rate bunch of welfare addicts. Germany. Went -- in a similar time frame -- from being arguably the brightest light on the continent, if not on the planet, in music, art, engineering and particularly in chemistry -- to an ugly dealer in horror. Russia? The only large country of which I am aware that departed the middle ages and directly went the wrong way. What do all these have in common? Central planning. Regulation. In what direction is America going? Well... Equal Rights? Try "affirmative action" and mandated equality of outcome. Environmental stewardship? Regulate us back to the cave. Contemporary music? Please. Do the math.
I've been working the math, using such numbers as I can find. I can give no detail in one post; this effort is hardly easy for me, much less for any poor reader. At its simplest: The American constitution was the framework under which the same animal that, elsewhere on the planet, was still (literally) shrinking heads, went from a collection of barely self-sufficient colonies to the undisputed world leader in roughly 150 years. I'm seeing too many ways in which that framework is being abandoned in favor of tactics and strategies that have not only failed, often more than once, but which have proven to be incredible engines of evil. I've watched a culture -- well, where'd it go? I'm concerned.
Wanna come for a ride?
