Dearest friends (carissimi amici),
Bless you for your concern. Are we, across the ocean, OK? Hard to say. If our fever breaks, maybe. If not, who knows. Nothing lasts forever, nations included. America’s current craziness stems from overconfidence in our continuance. Weren’t we “too big to fail”? As every previous empire has proven, no nation is. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
What went wrong? What sickened us?
Huddled in our hovel while the hurricane whirls without, I can offer only hunches. Historians still can’t agree why your Rome fell apart – and that was two millennia ago.
Few believed, when America was in the planning stage, self-government could work. The skeptics may yet prove right. Self-government depends on the collaboration of the governed. “We the People,” as our Founders styled us, must supervise ourselves in an unselfish spirit, for the good of all. If any minority subjects the entirety, the experiment fails; autocracy, with all its flaws, might prove more workable.
Imperfectly, bumpily, often grumpily, America made its way through two-and-a-half centuries. Materially, our system shot the moon, literally and figuratively. Yes, we almost disintegrated in civil strife, but after one side trounced, we patched up our differences and bobbled into world dominance. Like many successful folks, we came to believe our success inevitable. We quit paying attention to boring government in favor of glitzier amusements. Let “those guys” manage America while we goofed off and played games.
Predictably, the management of America was assumed by the self-interested, notably the rich, whose vision was to enrich themselves. They purchased politicians and public opinion with their excess means, convincing themselves that the well-being of the wealthy benefited all. Meanwhile my party, the non-plutocrats, dozed in our cozy confidence that what was best for most would prevail. Why would wage-earners and the poor vote against their blatant self-interest? It made no sense!
Turns out, with contemporary communications, you can confuse the inattentive into acting against their self-interest. Just tell lies loudly and fervently enough to stupefy. We the people were easily misled. The rich, having finagled control of America, got richer – and richer – investing a portion of their gains in the majority’s continuing confusion. While voters fretted about bogus issues, plutocrats smugly pocketed our economy’s surplus.
Too big to fail, what matter if we elected a baboon to lead us? Which we did – twice. We elevated to chief of the world a lowlife no alert parent would have hired as babysitter. We Americans care for our kids – but for our democracy, not so much.
The bad news may be our good news. The baboon turns out to be – guess what? – a baboon, only that’s insulting to baboons: a paragon of ineptitude, turpitude, greed, and every other vice. And, in all humility, he’s convinced he’s infallible. And guess what again? He’s screwing up, botching every element of America he touches, in the hopes of wrecking our system and anointing himself leader everlasting. Now even the dopiest Americans are waking to their error. Uh-oh.
If I sound bitter and battered, carissimi amici, it’s because I am – fulminous with self-rebuke. How could my generation have made such a mess of our precious bequest! We deserve our descendants’ obloquy!
Ranting, though, repairs nothing. We must repent, rescue America, and revive its promise, making ourselves again, if possible, that shining beacon on the hill. We were such a good idea! And such a success! And now? HOWL!!!!!!
A lifetime ago, a lucky draft number kept me out of Vietnam. Now is my war. Granted, I’m old and lame, but so? We have no choice.