A Central Fact or Two
One of the central facts of my life is that I have now reached the early stages of advanced age. (Some would say, though, that I am mincing words here and that, at 74, I am actually deep into old age. But everything is relative, and there are lots of people much older than I am, and there is every prospect that the generations now coming of various ages will keep walking across the planet for much longer periods still.)
There are so many interesting aspects to gaining some decades that I could easily devote much of this weblog to it, but I resist doing that. First of all, age (and its inveterate companion, the inexorably approaching figure of Death) isn't the central fact in my life, though that is just what I said when I first started mentally composing this post. My wife is very much another central point, and so is our child, the only one we had, the son that chose not to reach old age, and actually I am fortunate in that many things line up and await their shots at dominating my thoughts and thus being central facts in my life.
One of those is even the continuing Republican political dominance.
One might think that odd, since I am no admirer of that party, and because I don't figure to be around should their activities succeed, as I am fearing, in dragging this country up to and then over the brink and down into the same black pit of totalitarianism that engulfed other equally civilized countries -- Italy, Japan, and especially Germany -- soon after I was born.
But I keep thinking what a great pity that would be, considering the huge number of good aspects of the U.S. And who would be there to pull it back out of the pit to reach a respectable state of nationhood again, even by the instrument of terrible war, as the Allies did with the Axis in the 1940's? The European Union? China? Not likely, with nuclear weapons around. So would the U.S. collapse into being simply a large, disjointed village instead, a mere vestige of history similar to other great empires and ravaging nations of the past -- Athens, Rome, Turkey, England, Mongolia?
Interesting questions! And how's that for a big digression? But I never promised to stay on topic here.
There are so many interesting aspects to gaining some decades that I could easily devote much of this weblog to it, but I resist doing that. First of all, age (and its inveterate companion, the inexorably approaching figure of Death) isn't the central fact in my life, though that is just what I said when I first started mentally composing this post. My wife is very much another central point, and so is our child, the only one we had, the son that chose not to reach old age, and actually I am fortunate in that many things line up and await their shots at dominating my thoughts and thus being central facts in my life.
One of those is even the continuing Republican political dominance.
One might think that odd, since I am no admirer of that party, and because I don't figure to be around should their activities succeed, as I am fearing, in dragging this country up to and then over the brink and down into the same black pit of totalitarianism that engulfed other equally civilized countries -- Italy, Japan, and especially Germany -- soon after I was born.
But I keep thinking what a great pity that would be, considering the huge number of good aspects of the U.S. And who would be there to pull it back out of the pit to reach a respectable state of nationhood again, even by the instrument of terrible war, as the Allies did with the Axis in the 1940's? The European Union? China? Not likely, with nuclear weapons around. So would the U.S. collapse into being simply a large, disjointed village instead, a mere vestige of history similar to other great empires and ravaging nations of the past -- Athens, Rome, Turkey, England, Mongolia?
Interesting questions! And how's that for a big digression? But I never promised to stay on topic here.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 7:47 AM
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