Did we forget?

We said we would never forget.

I know it's been 22 years, and barely a soul in college now was even born when it happened. All right, maybe for them it's ancient history, like the partition of Berlin or the fall of Saigon was to my generation. 

What about the rest of us?

The people in power were around. They remember. What are they talking about nowadays? 

Pronouns. Drag queens. "Fortified" elections. Foreign wars. Re-masking. Replacing reliable forms of energy with spotty ones and demanding everything be run on electricity. Teaching a generation of men that they are lower than dirt. Open arms for every criminal on earth. 

Meanwhile we have the fall of Kabul, runaway inflation, cities turning to garbage, plummeting trust in our politicized government agencies. We see them sending people to jail for being in the wrong party and letting others walk away laughing from criminal activity if they're in the right party. 

It's hard to be governed by the stupid and terrible to be governed by the wicked, but when you get both at the same time, it's brutal. How did the great meritocracy, the place where any citizen could in theory become president, have to endure same problem the British suffered generations ago -- discovering that the wealthiest families and the best schools could turn out a horde of morons who all think they're brilliant? It was not supposed to happen here.

The Flag of Honor at a local parish

When America voted for Obama over McCain, what hurt most was the fear that we had forgotten in just seven years, that we were rolling over and going back to sleep, the dragon tired of the fight so soon, to lie down and dream about the "peace dividend" era of the 1990s. 

I wish. The 1990s seems like a time of great statesmanship compared to today, and that was the Clinton era. 

Shame on every one of us that let the country become what it is now. Shame on all of us who could have prevented this. Shame on everyone who thinks any of this is okay.