Of course, the're all passing away now, but throughout my adult life there was always a free drink for any WWII Yank who I might have chanced to come across at a pub. These guys and the country they came from, saved Old England and according to my East End London family, these young lads were kind, generous, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Then, in my teen years, this amazing country over the Atlantic sends a man to the Moon! Seemed at the time that all the Old Country could do was try to shut down Radio Caroline, persecute rock stars and ween cultural - and actual - rapists. My land was grooming the likes of Jimmy Savile, stalwarts of British culture, cradled in the protective cocoon of the BBC. When the punk band Sex Pistols hit the charts, weeks in a row with "God Save the Queen and her Fascist Regime" in the 80's, BBC's top of the charts left a blank in the #1 box. So much for freedom of speech in that neck of the woods.
When my parents moved the the US, I followed shortly after and although realizing that the US obviously wasn't pure as the driven snow after all, (Vietnam, Watergate) I had no trouble turning the Nelsonian blind eye to my newly adopted country.
However, as I lived my decades in the US I started to notice that a mean-spiritedness was slowly engulfing that fine nation. Even then, there were still astounding moments that left me gobsmacked. The internet, the Web; I mean how utterly amazing and world-transforming was that! And yet, the darkness kept closing in.
Despite the fierce defence of the right of the individual, the US citizenry always seemed to exhibit a sense of "we're all in this together".
But now, the US seems to have lost its holy grail. 9/11, and the US throws the baby out with the bathwater. Rendition, waterboarding, continual foreign wars; 'Homeland'. Media driven perpetual fear dissemination, amplified xenophobia. An insidious, unspoken "I've got mine, Jack" attitude becomes apparent, manifesting itself in the form of misogynist, 'Christian' righteous right wing sociopath hypocrites being VOTED into office.
Then there is the NSA revelations by Snowden that the United States security apparatus has gone completely out of control, spying on its own citizens, its international friends. I've gotta tell you, we're not scoring many points right now with the people of this planet.
The United States now has four branches of government, three of them have successfully balanced each other over centuries: Legislative, Judicial and Executive. The newer and lesser known fourth branch is the NSA and it is by far the most powerful. When you can assemble compromising dossiers on individuals in every one of the other three branches of government, you are highly unlikely to be challenged in any serious way. To anyone how has bothered to read a measure of history, it ought to be glaringly obvious that the United States is in REAL trouble.
Is it too late to reverse the damage? Probably. What politician will dare to risk the ire of the NSA?
Proof of my pontifications? I suspect - and predict - that little or no changes will be forthcoming to restrain this new, most powerful branch of the United States government. The US 'security' departments will slowly, inadvertently and with the best of intentions - strangle the free interaction of thought and ideas, making the citizens of my adopted country more circumspect about what they are thinking and may perhaps hesitate to disseminate the wonderful, wild, wacky and sometimes powerful ideas that has made this a creative place and such a fun country to live in.
