Today is Memorial Day. This is a day about which many Americans think as the start of summer vacation. Memorial day is the day of the Indianapolis 500 race--rapidly going around in circles to return to the starting point--more about this later. Another notion held by the vast majority of americans, especially those born after the ending of World War 2, is that this is a day on which to spend money on sales, sales, sales. How many citizens remember the true purpose of Memorial Day? A minority of us understand that this holiday's true purpose is to honor, with pride and humility, the ultimate sacrifice a citizen can yield to the country--his/her life.

Memorial day is an all-inclusive event at its heart: men and women; the rainbow of POC; gay and straight; well-to-do and dirt poor; highly educated and illiterate; native born and immigrants. We are to remember their sacrifice of themselves in our country's wars, many of which wars should never have been fought.

"The price of freedom isn't free", a platitude, but a truth all the same. Did we as a people send our children to die in pursuit of our freedom--yes, but not always. We fought "the good war" as Studs Terkel described it, meaning World War 2. But we fought wars of imperialism: the Spanish-American war, which featured the first known U.S. false flag operation. We fought in banana republics so the giant food conglomerates could continue raking huge profits from the soil of foreign lands by utilizing indigenous workers being paid next to nothing.

Now we, ourselves, are on the brink of becoming a banana republic, one so-riddled with corruption and inequality that the U.S.A. is, or has already become.

The impetus to write this essay slowly crawled into my consciousness after painfully absorbing several facts currently in play and yet to fully mature in some aspects.

We all knew in the back of our minds that the U.S. was drifting (or propelled) into a corruptocracy. Wealth inequality writ large. Government which rarely governs, and when it does will do so only at the beck of its wealthy paymasters. The entire litany of the demeaned state of our State will not be fully enumerated here, for that would make for a much longer essay than is intended.

Once America was "the beacon to the world" offering the promise of a chance for a better life, even success (however that may be defined). The United States, like the Statue of Liberty, is tarnished. Like the Statue of Liberty, the sheen of our country can be restored--but not without an enormous outpouring of sweat--sweat equity to regain what used to be ours and which still may be ours.

The ultimate point to be made here concerns the looming election of a new United States President. Whereas, at this nation's founding there was a surfeit of brilliant leaders, who, though of differing political philosophies, were thinkers--thinkers--of matters politic, each with his own vision for the nascent America for which they guided its birth: Washington, Franklin, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jay and many others to whom we should always be grateful.

To the twenty-first century we have evolved--but a better word to describe the current situation is "devolved". We have gone from the enlightenment of the 18th century, to the soulless cupidity of the 21st. Think now upon the two main contenders for the United State's highest office. I cannot do so except with sorrow.

On the one hand, we have a pathological liar, who is a stranger to the truth and has been so for decades.
On the other hand, we have a snake oil salesman selling a toxic brew, which is so mysterious that even his acolytes are unsure of its contents.

But the worst is this: both of the "contenders" are despised by a majority of American citizens in no-uncertain terms. And both are now under criminal investigation.

How did we as a people get to this sorry state? The U.S.A. has become a source of derision in the civilized world and rightly so.
Can anyone even pretend to comprehend this sorrowful state of affairs, let alone justify it? No answers appear to me as readily available or accurate. This topic is important for further contemplation for there yet may be hope for remediation. Otherwise, we shall surely line up like lemmings to run over the cliff, regardless of which "leader" is at the fore.