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.

We are arguing about the wrong subject.

I find it totally understandable that each of us are motivated to look out for number one as a priority requirement, and only after we have done that, can we think about the interests of others.  Back in the day, when there were few of us and distance between us was a real concept, this worked pretty well.  If we could not get our way, we resorted to violence and resolved the issue at hand.  The strongest prevailed, the weakest succumbed, and life went on pretty much as usual, but with different people sitting at the top of the pile.  This worked pretty well from the time that we walked to the fight carrying clubs through the development of airplanes and bombs.  Technology has fundamentally changed the game and humans all over the globe have yet to admit it.

The age old game is playing out right now all over the world, with individuals killing each other in every corner of this shrinking orb, spinning mindlessly in space, and we are getting increasingly adept at the killing, while simultaneously developing alternative realities as a means of coping with what would otherwise be a disturbing situation.  The impending election here in this country is a ludicrous example of modern politics in this once near-great country.  The Donald promises to make America Great Again and The Brat promises to make America Joyful again.  Nobody.  Repeat Nobody is talking about, let alone thinking about the need to improve the life of seven going on eight billion people - not for moral reasons, but as the absolute only way that humans are going to avoid self-extinction.

Ironically, the Chinese Communist Party comes closest to understanding the situation and their solution is a dictatorship that aspires to replace us in “leading” the world.  Our response is to try to find a way to “defeat” those efforts, without having to meet the very real needs of people living outside of our imaginary borders, and the problem is made even more difficult by our love affair with wishful thinking.  We are going to elect our next president based on the sign that he or she wants to put on the bathroom door and whether we find his or her personality to be more appealing.  Never do we concern ourselves with anything other than the price of gasoline, the age of the fetus, and our precious feelings.  Hell, we don’t even want to talk about anything else, let alone do anything that might change the present trajectory of history.  We have to decide whether The Donald or The Brat will do our thinking for us.

Dinosaurs couldn't figure it out either.

 Various pundits tell us that our democracy is in danger and I agree with them, but not for the reasons that they proclaim.  Neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump are big enough to destroy democracy in this or any other country.  Nor is Kamala Harris.  The only people that can and are destroying democracy are you and me because of our refusal to think.  I very much doubt, however, that we will see the end of democracy in this country, because I fully expect us to stumble into a nuclear exchange with one or the other of our foreign competitors first.  A major nuclear conflict will change the ground rules of life forever more and depending on its severity, will make liberal and conservative issues interesting history.

You and I are not up to the responsibilities associated with living in a democracy.  Instead of thinking about our problems, we resort to policies rooted in wishful thinking.  This results in the flip flop nature of our national policies at home and abroad with the result that our problems grow in magnitude instead of being addressed adequately.  Neither Open Borders nor Closed Borders will resolve the problems that threaten nuclear war.  Neither capitalism nor socialism will save our economy.  Neither whatever or whatever will save whatever.  The only way that seven going on eight billion people can live together on a spinning rock of finite dimensions and finite resources is to cooperate with one another.  All of us, no matter where we live.

My guess is that those of us that manage to live through the nuclear holocaust might, repeat might, figure it out, but there are no guarantees that even if we do, we will be able to do the necessary.  Our grandparents saw the light dimly after the Second World War, but they and their children and grandchildren were unable to sustain the effort long enough to bring about the changes necessary to prevent more war.  There is no guarantee that we will do any better.  We might very well just be in the process of killing off another species in the evolution of this spinning rock.  Dinosaurs couldn't figure it out either.

There is one essential requirement...

 In order to live free, you have to be willing to defend your freedom with your life - in a dark ally or on a foreign battlefield.  If too many of your fellow Americans are unwilling to do that, your own willingness becomes inadequate.  The precise way in which that destroys your freedom is, of course, unclear, but it is inevitable.

America is conflicted with regard to "Free Speech."

 America is conflicted with regard to "Free Speech."  On the one hand we believe that it is the critical foundation of our democracy and, on the other hand, we see it to be difficult to accept any speech that we find unpleasant.  Nowhere in modern America do we see a conversation in depth about any issue.  Twitter/X claims to do this, but insists on severely limiting the depth of the conversation to sound bites that convince no one of the legitimacy of any thought.  There is no channel of communication that permits, repeat permits, let alone encourages, an honest exchange of views on any subject of importance.  All we have are sound bites, memes, cliches, and pronunciations combined with the attention span of a nit.  At community level the principal tool used to deny free speech is the need to be polite.  This is the same naïveté that insists that wars must follow the rules, and people must be nice to each other.

I see this utter stupidity, combined with a severe case of wishful thinking, to be the reason that we are burdened with inadequate leadership.  Our various politicians struggle to make speeches that appeal to mindless voters rather than adequately addressing the various issues that plague society and threaten our place in the world.  The root problem is us, not them, but that intellectual burden is too heavy for us to bear, and we will continue to blindly swirl down the sewer of life instead.  At some point in the process, one or another of our foreign adversaries will mismanage one or another of their disagreements with us and we will stumble into a war with another nuclear power.  Whomever wins that war will inherit an already overpopulated planet that will have been seriously damaged in its ability to feed the human community by the very conflict that gave them their hegemony. 

I fear Harris more than I dislike Trump.

We are in the process of choosing our next president and I fear Harris more than I dislike Trump, so I am going to vote for him rather than her. If the rest of this country decides to elect her and her inane economic policies, her simpering foreign policies, and her partisan intentions, I predict accelerated decline in all areas of our lives to include personal relationships between individual citizens.  Given the wishful thinking that characterizes so much of the populace, I fully expect one or the other of our foreign adversaries to initiate a nuclear exchange in one or the other of the places that the Biden Administration has permitted to devolve into a shooting war.  Although historians will blame Harris, I continue to blame us - you and me - for putting up with this ridiculous situation wherein we don't talk to each other substantively about real issues.  Instead, looking to the likes of Trump and Harris to do our thinking for us. 

Changing your mind about important matters.

We are the product of the sum of our experiences.  The longer that we are alive, the more experiences we collect.  At one point or another, younger people begin noticing that they have a different viewpoint than do their older neighbors.  Older people tend to resist changing their attitude about things, even as conditions begin to change around them.  The trick to life for older people is deciding intelligently which opinions need to change and which should remain unchanged.  In order to do that intelligently, the older person needs to understand the changes that technology is introducing.  I find it to be an interesting challenge.