I'm sorry to admit it but I fear you're correct in every detail.
This doesn't seem to be the same country I served and was so proud of in my younger years. It seems that I'm living a Rip-van-wrinkle type of life where I wake up and find out that I'm living in some third world country.
I've remembered a quote about the "enemy within" that goes:
"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague."...Cicero
Thanks for your kind reply!
That’s a very wise passage from Cicero.
I once read a book by Evan S. Connell called ‘Points for a Compass Rose’ and in it the author noted (something to the effect) that it is presumptious to expect any country to last more than a couple of hundred years. In retrospect, the nation’s founders would likely be astounded that their grand experiment lasted as long as it did. One of them (Jefferson?) prophesized that once people discovered that they could vote themselves other people’s money, that would be the beginning of the end.
Well, here we are. It was truly great while it lasted.
...”A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague.”...Cicero”...
Rabble...Thank you for this quote. It frighteningly and accurately describes the political situation in the US today. Silence from the masses has allowed this to happen in the face of years of the most ridiculous and insane attacks on the values which built the freedom enabling us to help even our poor like kings compared to much of the rest of the world. Sadly, the corrupt go crazy when many people enjoy prosperity. They want to con and thieve that surplus into their own hands..They want POWER over the treasure chest. Well, they have it now and I predict that much of our nation will fall silent, trying to ignore the obvious until the day when they have to stand and fight. God help the next generation. We truly are a nation in decline.