Oh, The Timing!

This past week on PBS, POV's documentary, "My Perestroika" was about the last generation of Russians to grow up under the Soviet system, who witnessed the fall of the Union and the subsequent confusion, desperation and strangeness that followed and continues for them.

Meanwhile, TH¡S had shown the William Hurt/Richard Burton version of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I've never read the novel, but I own a copy of Gyorgi Dalos' 1985: What Happens After Big Brother Dies and a Scholastic weekly magazine that has a condensed drama script version of the Orwell story.

I'm sure you're wondering where I'm going with this train of thought.

I'm not sure myself.

I think America is approaching the kind of historical crossroads that many nations have faced over the centuries. Perhaps by this time six years hence, we'll be talking about the Former United States of America...all a nation has to do to fall apart is for its citizens to doubt the premise that the system to which they have been born is morally superior to all others in existance. Maybe the falling-apart has already begun and the majority doesn't see it happen. Perhaps they'll wake up someday to empty Wal*Marts, no burgers at MickyD's and TV footage of tanks on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Or the opposite happens--the masses see their predicament, stand up...and the shotgun sings its song. And the United States stays what it is, in name only, for some generations.

Either way would be a nightmare.