Y'know, when a relationship goes bad, or parents feel like their kid has gone bad, the folks involved can -and usually do- ask, 'What went wrong? Where did we go astray?'
How do you go about that for a whole nation? Is it even worth asking? I suppose so, else we're doomed to do it again.
But even in a relationship of two, there are innumerable variables.. he said/she said; what he/she never said but always thought/felt; what her mom said/thought about him that influenced her... yeah.
How do you unravel the decline of a nation-state that's not a thousand years safely dead?
I read the headlines today, I think back over the last, oh, decade and I just want to vomit. I want to cry. I want to scream and flail and throw a fit, not because life sucks, but because there's not a damned thing to be done about it. We're well past the therapy stage.
I used to sneer at the whacko survivalists and the closet-revolutionaries... and still do, for that matter. Sadly, I've come to believe they're right. For the wrong reasons, sure, but correct all the same.
I used to believe. With all my heart. I was a patriot. I was a soldier, and I believed in my calling.
But what I served then was already becoming a self-serving, consumptive monster, rabid with power and lusting insatiably for blood/money/more power. I served a nation which has become a berserk animal, and needs to be put down.
