WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE

I was recently walking through a CVS in Buffalo, New York — but it could have been anywhere in the country, really — and it suddenly hit me: We are fast becoming a third world nation.  

Walk through a pharmacy, grocery, or hardware store and you will usually find three things.

1. Gaping holes on the shelves where inventory has not been replaced.
2. Items strewn around haphazardly.
3. Listless, uncaring employees.

It reminds me of a Caribbean Island like Jamaica or St. Thomas.

Like most banana boat republics, almost everyone — liberal and conservative alike— are completely disillusioned with everything other than sports and video entertainment.  

People are scared of what’s happening. The prisons are full. Children are starving. Healthcare sucks. The homeless are everywhere. Corruption is rampant. The political leaders all lie, all the time. And the rich are getting obscenely richer.

And when you add in the fact that about half the population of the United States distrusts the government, doctors, and scientists, believing instead in crazy conspiracies and utter nonsense, we have all the ingredients for a strong man takeover and a loss of freedom and the rule of law in the not so distant future. And that will be the end of democracy and the grand American experiment.

COVID will, of course, be singled out as the culprit that broke America. But that’s a copout. I’m thinking the fault lines ran much deeper than a virus that appeared in early 2020. And they have been ripping us apart for many years now. COVID just exposed the deeper illness.

Personally, I’d blame it on The Gipper.