I witnessed first hand....was part of....and contributed to....the collapse of America. Now today we like to bandy about the word 'America"....apply it wherever we want to....a body of water or news source....and mythologize or demonize it....but it for two hundred years pointed to a people....not a land mass....but a peculiar....melting pot of a people.
Like a great lake it might be calm as a puddle of rain water....but at times as on the Sea of Galilee....a great wind would come down off the hills of the Golan and produce a tempest where ships would capsize and fishermen would die....but the teeming life beneath the waves would go on as usual....and this would continue on any sea until the waters were polluted by industries....or over-fished....or some other species would invade the lake.In 1960 the cars changed and the music changed....we were a Barbie and a G. I. Joe world....and we became as that mythical Camelot....until the industrialization and the exploitation and the invasive species appeared and began to devour everything good in sight.
I was as easy to manipulate as anyone. If they said....'buy this'....to make you appear more manly....I would buy it....or 'drink this' to be something that you are not but you want to be....I would drink it....and then in 1982....and thereabouts....before and after that actually....God told his fishermen who were catching few fish to cast the net on the right side of the boat....and there was so many of us that the net almost capsized the boat.
Then we became the fishers....or rather the hunters instead of the hunted....for a time. We would build our own version of Camelot....with Christ as the King. There was a great round table....with noble knights all around it....Sir William and Sir Robert Charles and Sir John And Sir David and Sir Patrick....and many more....but eventually the barbarians came....the barbarians always come.
We grew fat. I grew fat. The King had long since departed....withdrew....because we seemed to forget that he was there....so we summoned a new king....conjured up would describe it better....a king like the other nations had....only stronger!
We didn't know that he was an evil king....nor did we really care....for he flattered us so. There was no Magna Carta or constitutions with this king.....no parliaments or congresses....and then a light appeared in the distance....and a sound!
Those of us who through shame had retired far enough away so as not to be forced to listen to the bellicose voice of the new evil king....could hear....and can hear.....can't you hear it also....the sound of a trump....a real trumpet....not just a powerful horn!
We are slowly coming out in the open....walking right through the parades....towards the light....and looking up....for therein has always been and will always be our only true hope....our King....the King of all kings....coming back in power and glory!
