Is This The End, My Friend?

So long time Herald columnist Leonard Pitts wrote an opinion piece today in which he wondered whether we were seeing the end of the USA. Normally I dismiss such writing as alarmist, but maybe because of the tensosity of the plague, I read it with some alarm. I mean -- we're just 243 years old as a nation, and 160 years ago came close to splitting up.

Just today, as Wifey and I watched yet another violent, anti cop protest, in Seattle, she remarked that this was really getting old. It is. I'm all for police reform, but the thought that we could live in a world of social workers and counselors in lie of LE is absurd. I read that in Minneapolis, where the citizen murder that sparked all this happened, the city council voted to dismantle the cops. And in a follow up article, each member dipped into city funds to secure her or his own private security detail. Ah. Politicians...

My dear doctor friends, dealing directly with the virus, are shocked and amazed at the lack of any government leadership here in Florida, with our Trump mini me governor. This clown actually mocked New York in the early stages of the pandemic, and now is eating his words, as our cases spike here following his and his cronies' lack of taking control.

One friend actually thinks Trump and Desantis ought to be indicted for war crimes when, or if, this whole thing ends.

Politics to me was always interesting and fun. In college, our friend Jorge, a guy out of Central Casting for Miami Republican Cuban guy, and I would debate endlessly. He once wrote "Al Haig for President" in washable paint on the roof of my car, and I placed an ad in the student paper, The Hurricane, seeking students for a "Draft Teddy Kennedy to Run For President" club, giving Jorge's name and our apartment number. About 10 called.

It's no longer fun. I've had to "unfriend" some FaceBook (tm) friends -- some for being scarily MAGA idiots, and some for being so lefty that they went after Israel as a legitimate nation -- a no go area for me.

My close friends are mostly Dems, but our buddy Mike is part of the club, a life long Republican and son of Midwestern stock. I even enjoyed politics with his father Ed, one of my mentors. One birthday gift from me was a subscription to the ultra lefty "Mother Jones" magazine. He reported to me that he enjoyed the articles, but was annoyed at the mailing lists he was placed on. "Every day it's 'Save the F-ing whales' or some such crap."

Pitts said the whole issue is race. I don't know. But I do know we're more divided than any time in my life, and it's scary. We need to be banding together to fight this awful virus, and instead we're worried about putting down groups that oppose us.

My beloved NYC seems to have the virus at least temporarily under control, but crime is spiking to 80s levels.  I am SO thankful D2 and Jonathan no longer live there. I'd have been panicked during the height of Covid there, and even more so now, as places life Washington Square Park, near their apartment, are scenes of daily unrest.

My grandparents left Czarist controlled or influenced Eastern Europe to seek better lives here. They found it -- first on the Lower East Side, and then The Bronx, and eventually , through their kids, in classic American suburbia.  I never knew, nor did my greatest generation parents, anything OTHER than being Americans.

Wifey's family went through the Holocaust, suffering the deaths of a majority of their extended relatives. My in laws went to Palestine, and fought to make it Israel, but then came to the US for an easier life than they found in 1960 Israel. My mother in law is comfortable in her Covid 19 bubble protected ALF 60 years later.

The Ds' men's families also came here seeking better lives, from Colombia and Venezuela. D2's husband's family learned from a sympathetic former housekeeper that they were about to be kidnapped and held for ransom, in Caracas. My consuegra took the family that night to a hotel, and the next day on a plane to Miami. They never looked back.

I joke a lot about my fellow Americans, but I believe in my marrow we live in the best country on earth. Canada's too cold, and the football there sucks. Our roots here are deep and sustaining. I pray we can stay.

Hopefully this virus will run its course. Dr. Barry points out that we'll need to reach herd immunity, and those of us of a certain vintage need to be particularly safe. Our kids and grandkids should be just fine. No guarantees, but neither are there guarantees about surviving routine drives on I-95.

And maybe come November, we will oust that embarrassment from the White House. He has truly engendered an era of misery -- lack of leadership, and making ok speech and behaviors unfathomable during past times.

I truly hope, and pray that July 4, 2021 will be an Independence Day of renewal, and hope, instead of misery, sickness, and fear.

I guess ultimately it's, like all else, in the Big Man's hands.