There’s a term “race to the bottom” which describes a lose-lose scenario. When everyone selfishly tries to undercut the competition, nobody wins. That’s where we are now in more ways than one.

If the country were a person, it could examine its conscience and trace its thinking and actions back to where shortsighted decisions got us where we are today. We could confess our sins and see a therapist. We could come up with an action plan to regain our equanimity. We could admit our wrongs, repair damages wherever possible, and move on.

But we’re not a person. We’re 330 million people, all of whom find it more convenient to blame someone else for the fix we’re in.

Maybe it’s my own form of historical narcissism, but it seems to this baby-boomer that we started digging a really deep hole for ourselves to fall in about the time I was born. The Korean War was a shameful exercise in bombing others into submission. We repeated the experiment about fifteen years later in Vietnam. Then, about twenty five years later, we created a false flag event to justify invading and destabilizing the Middle East.

None of this was my doing, but I was around for all of it.

I would like to see justice served. I would like to see aging, crippled Henry Kissinger executed on television. I would like to see Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice and whoever else was behind the Weapons of Mass Destruction scam sentenced to life in prison.

I would like to see our current president confined to a mental hospital. But what I would like to see happen and what will probably happen almost certainly have nothing in common. This has always been the way it worked for me. I have never voted for a winning candidate in a political race. When I voiced my opinions about the Vietnam War I was invited to “Love It or Leave It.” So now, after living in America for over sixty years, I chose to leave and I’m happy I did so.