The nation I was brought up to believe in wouldn’t have let a crater in midtown New York smolder for a month, let alone 7 years, all the while navel-gazing and wondering “why poor us?”

So that is a bad sign.

But there are — one hopes — enough people like KK4 and myself, and the missus, and my parents, and my in-laws — enough people who *will* yet again pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

If we are given the chance, that is. If the gubmint and whoever else you want to blame (the gubmint, WITH corporate sponsorship?!) sees only a nation of helpless whiners crying out for MORE government intervention to save them, intervention from the same pack o jackals that sold the country out to begin with — egad.

Well — there’s always 29 Palms, or Weedpatch, CA or a few other parts of the country that are havens for the mentally unbalanced and the self-reliant. Alaska, anyone? ;o/