Winter Drum, Electra, 42nd Day of Hagwinter, 524 M.E.

 

The United States is in for some rough times - it's a hard and rocky road ahead and the nation may not survive. C'est la vie. 

I'm 70 years old and, statistically, probably won't live long enough to see the end of this chapter about to unfold in front of us. But that's okay, because I've seen this show before.

I've lived through hard times - I grew up in the generation that did duck-and-cover air-raid drills in school in anticipation of nuclear war. People tend to look back at the 60s and 70s with dewy eyes and remember it all as flower children and peace signs, as white picket fences and Beatlemania, but the times were actually marked by waves of political assassinations (JFK, RFK, MLK, and many more), race riots, spiraling inflation, OPEC and the energy crisis, Nixon, Watergate, Kent State, paranoia, fear, and loathing. The war atrocities of the times weren't being committed by other countries (like today with Russia in Ukraine and Israel in Gaza) but by us in Vietnam, Laos, and elsewhere. Fear of communism was a constant presence, the USSR was bent on global domination, and death by global thermonuclear annihilation was not considered an unlikely ending to it all.

The 60s and 70s were some dark fucking times. But in the 80s, things seemed to improve a little (no thanks to Reagan, but Republicans still gave him credit) and by '89 the Berlin Wall came down, America ascended to the throne of international superiority, the lone global superpower, and the nation thrived in the Clinton economy (yeah, I'm giving him the credit for that). We rode that wave for a very impressive three decades. 

But we're heading back to those hard times again, to that 60s/70s state of an America in decline, Russian assets infiltrating our intelligence networks, spiraling energy costs, violence in the streets, and a paramilitary presence in our cities. Fear and Loathing, Part II. I don't welcome it and I probably won't survive it because of age and all, but I want to say that you, dear reader, you could probably survive because we've done this all before. We've already been here. We've already seen this shitty, pornographic movie they're about to screen for us again.

Buckle up, sit back, and wait 25 or 30 years and things will likely get better again. You'll see. Impermanence is swift.