Man Behind the Curtain

Sometimes it feels like America is circling the drain of its own destiny. Another used to be country taking its place on the trash heap of history.

We’ve got a carnie barker for president, shouting out inanities 140 characters at a time, stoking the flames of discord that are ravaging the fabric of our nation – hatred and distrust running rampant from shore to shore.

And I can’t help thinking that the Trump Chump is like a B-movie version of The Great and Powerful Oz. All sound and thunder – and smoke.

We need to be paying attention to the man behind the curtain, but we’re too busy obsessively glued to the late breaking news of the minute to notice all that we are losing. It’s too late to lock the door when the thief’s already made his score.

That sneak thief Power and his twin brother Money have made the world in their image and they like what they see. It seems every time in the course of history a few people have had an idea based on fairness, equality, compassion and integrity, the baser aspects of the human animal eventually win over that gentler side of our nature. The tools of our undoing are almost always the same: calculated ignorance of the many, visions of fiefdom of the few and bread and circuses for all.

So while we’re riveted to the intrigue of the hour and the scandal of the day, or the spray of automatic weapons at the ballpark or the office or the church, while we’re preoccupied with the messy business of living; while we’re scared to death of the future and are helpless victims to the past, our world is seeping through the cracks.

This Great Experiment we call America won’t be brought down from terrorists from distant shores, it will tear itself limb from limb from within.