I personally feel my country is slowly yet steadily falling from within and a couple generations down the proverbial road are in deep do-do.
interesting point tom. there is an issue here of, has the US changed in the last 20 years? I certainly feel Australia has changed.
The point is that we grow older somehow believing our country is still the same as what we knew in our formative years. We want to believe that, plus any change happens slowly. We cling to a belief that 'underneath' the spirit of a country is still the same. That is being questioned by observers more qualified than I, certainly to do with the USA.
In Australia, I still look to the gum trees, the natural world, and turn away when I see clear-felled slabs of country. But I am slowly coming around to seeing that Australians are not the people I used to know.
This is hard to qualify, but more and more I feel uncomfortable in my own country. One reason I like India is that they still resist being 'proper'. I see a quality there that I recall from the wider Aust country, if not the city dwellers. An easy going distaste for authority and more than anything, a spontaneous friendliness. However, India is also changing.
I don't buy the argument that I am just an old fogey, who can't change with the times. The times are going downhill, and I am not so stupid to realise the quality of mind in my country is dropping.
I heard the other day, a younger person criticising us who always say this is not how it used to be - she said, its current, it what's happening now - forget the past and live in the now!
Well, it's impoverished. That is obvious to me. All I can do is to keep alive the love of inner wealth and ramshackle beauty, in my own little space. I know I am not alone! There are still many, of all ages, who can tell real wealth from sham facade.
I expect it has always been thus.
from my little ramshackle life...