Times, They Are A Changing

     Now that I have reached my seventies I can reflect on some of the events of my past. I can first remember people saying "I Like Ike" , talking about President Eisenhower running for election. As I went through school I remember the inauguration of JFK and his assassination. I lived through the cold war with the USSR, the Vietnam war, and the civil rights movement. Two more assassinations , including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy.

 Then, there was Watergate where we had a sitting president resign in the face of scandal. Spent four years in the Air Force as the Vietnam war wound down. Constant wars in the Middle East kept the world on edge. The worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor, came 9/11 2001 with the attack on the World Trade Center. While George Bush was not my popular favorite the country came together against a common enemy. Wars escalated including one still going on today in Afghanistan.  I've seen three recessions  including the latest in 2008, climate change demonstrated throughout the world with major weather disasters. Last but not least, the election of a black man to the highest office in the land Barrack Obama, with the promise of change  and a better America.

 I watched politics torn apart by this and the death of political compromise. Then the soap opera drama that ended in the election of our current president Donald Trump. The greatest con of all time on the American public. A egomaniac who has never served anyone but himself, with no empathy for the plight of the common man, since he has no idea of that life, used America's fears and racism to secure the Presidency.

 I have survived several epidemic threats, including, Swine Flu, SARS, Ebola, H1N1, and others. However, the current pandemic the Coronavirus is the most serious of all, and will have catastrophic consequences on America and the world. More people will die in America alone, than in all the wars mentioned above combined. The King is naked and has shown his incompetence in the face of this emergency. He claims no accountability for our slow response and indecisiveness. It is the broken system that he inherited, it will miraculously end on it own, he says "he" is doing a great job as people die in the thousands. He says "who knew". Everyone knew, and was trying to be prepared except him. He disbanded the agency responsible for addressing just this type of crisis, and then said he didn't do it, and we would have to find out who did it in his administration. I recall seeing a movie called Outbreak that showed this same happening. The task to try to contain the spread and the projections of massive deaths if an antidot was not found. Only in the movie they do find the antidote to make a serum, and worldwide devastation is averted. I hope that our real life story can end as promising.