The last days of the USA

hose who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. ~ B. Franklin

As I was going through the various news feeds, this caught my attention: NZ leads worldwide in human freedom 

While I was looking for the source of that headline I ran across this: Forbes ranks New Zealand at top of ‘Best Countries for Business’ list Which lead me to the source Forbes itself.  There is a handy slideshow that puts The USA at number 12 (Canada is number 5).

This got me recalling when the USA was exceptional. Something which our elected leader has deemed farcical. In my own recollection there was an overall depression I felt during the Carter administration.  It felt grey, the misery index caught that overall feeling.  We had a resurgence of exceptional ism with Reagan, which waned as "No new taxes" fell to the left. There was a better feeling with Clinton, despite his short comings.  Next was a horrible time for our country with some small tragic tinged silver linings as we rallied together.

It all seems so long ago.  We spend way past our means.  We send robots to kill children.  We blame objects for peoples actions. We vilify groups the name of Tolerance.   We confuse rights with responsibility.
We are being pushed away from belief in God by fundamentalist Atheists and fundamentalist Christians alike.We are being lied too about science and being told to shut up when pointing out the lies.  Our information is vast and spun and filtered down to nonsensical sound bites.

American politics often seems to boil down to the same two groups of enemies shouting “My rights!” “Dead children!” and then switching sides depending on whose ox is being gored. Sometimes, to spice things up, they switch to calling each other Hitler.


And we pride ourselves on being far more rational than those stupid medieval who held philosophical disputations. Then we go and watch “Are Ancient Astronauts Being Channeled by Psychics?” specials on the History Channel.

I look at Dubai and feel the USA should be at the forefront of engineering and architecture.  Yet, we are punishing those who succeed and glorifying those who settle.

Popular vote shows me, this is what we want from our nation.  Although, part of me hopes we can see the wrongness of the course we have set.

As it is, it takes my every iota to muster hope that we are not in the sunset.