We are the modern Rome and it is way too bad.

 I was taught in school that I had the right to free speech and I enjoyed that right during a long life in what I honestly believe to be the most enlightened country in the history of the world.  I still have that legal right, but I find it to be increasingly difficult to exercise, not because of governmental restrictions but rather because of societal pressures.  It is an oversimplification, like most thought today, but I fall on the conservative side of most arguments and that puts me in the MAGA camp whether I want to be there or not.  I readily acknowledge that I disagree with the Brat even more than I disagree with the Donald.

I am an “active” senior citizen which means that I am out and about, rubbing shoulders with a wide variety of thought in the general public, but exchanging meaningful conversation about real problems with no one - absolutely no one!  When I try, I am shunned and, if I persist, I am subjected to whatever societal pressure can be mounted against me.  I am not rebutted, I am just told to shut the hell up, and, if I persist, societal pressure that impacts my economic viability is brought to bear.  I find myself retreating from the fight and it bothers me no end.  I have never done that before in my entire life and it raises questions about me that I find extremely troubling.  I am going along to get along, even as I understand that I, along with the rest of this country, am going down the wrong road.

If I were not part of all of this, it would be hilarious.  What we are doing to ourselves is pure unadulterated stupidity of the very highest order.  It is also very fundamental stuff.  The very nature of our people is changing in the most fundamental of ways.  American society is no longer what it was when I learned the societal rules.  As a kid, I believed in this country sufficiently to give up a student deferment and join the army at the height of the killing in Korea.  As an adult, I wholeheartedly participated in the effort to defeat the Soviet Union.  Today, I watch us become the laughing stock of a world that wants to eat our lunch and is actively preparing to try to do just that.  I honestly believe that our mindlessness risks our continued existence, because we and our principal adversaries have armed ourselves with nuclear weapons.  

Several things are at work on me.  I am finishing up my ninety second year on earth and do not function mentally or physically as well as I used to, and I increasingly question the value of the society that increasingly shuns me.  I am seriously tempted to sit back and watch history repeat itself once again as we swirl down the sewer pipe of history.  The only reason that I continue to try to get through to the rest of us, is habit.  It is not because I have any real hope of reversing things.  Wishful thinking is on the cusp of victory and nuclear obliteration is sure to follow soon thereafter.  The price of gasoline, the age of the fetus, the sign on the bathroom door and our precious feelings be damned.  We are the modern Rome and it is way too bad.