My Awakening

Perhaps you remember this monumentally self-serving, deluded pretty boy whose overweening ambition mislead him into believing that he ought to be President of these United States. He was, fortunately, brought low by a sexual imbroglio which, parenthetically, is a matter between him and his late wife and not of our concern here. My objection to the always impeccably coiffed and turned out, but otherwise empty suit was his blatant opportunism and lack of any real political conviction to say nothing of integrity. Because, during the last Presidential primary season, the center was crowded the position most open was the populist left, so he exploited it. He donned a denim shirt and jeans and feigned an abiding concern of the working poor and the impoverished. I never bought it. Yet his slogan, "There Are Two Americas", can not be dismissed out-of-hand.

As I've traveled the heartland of America, avoiding as much as possible the Interstate highway corridors, I have seen the truth of what Edwards posited. I've been gathering up some of the photographs I have taken of the rotting remains of abandoned residential and commercial buildings in the Midwest, South, and High Plains and parts of the West. The extent of the dereliction and decay that I encountered in much of travel was shocking and heartbreaking. Can this really be the America that I have always believed to be endlessly renewing; a place of unlimited opportunity in which its inhabitants continuously prosper and with the prosperity the land is groomed and not only maintained by constantly improved? This was a different America than I have known and I don't think that I am particularly naive nor generally uninformed. Do you think that perhaps I'm exaggerating? Well my friends, stay a couple of days in Dodge City, Kansas or take a slow drive through Pecos in West Texas or a few dozen other places I've been to during the past few years.

I'm trying to understand these experiences but it is difficult, if not insurmountable, to do so. Obviously, depopulation, which in the Great Plains started during the dust bowl era, is an important factor. What about the methamphetamine epidemic, governmental failures, social pathologies, out of country job transfer and who knows what else. I'm pondering and will try to write more if I have anything worthwhile to say.

I will leave you with one final admission. In large part much of my political stance is based on a life-long and rock solid belief in the equality of opportunity in our country. Much of my entire social-political belief system flows from that. Yet, what I have been encountering has caused me to question the validity of this tenet. I am starting to think that for many of our fellow inhabitants the game is rigged.

For those who have persisted in visiting this blog, my everlasting thanks. I will try to acknowledge your fortitude by being more diligent about making entries... but don't count on it. I have good intentions,  but, as often happens, my reach exceeds my grasp.
Byron