LETTER: National disaster

How amusing it must be to observe our beloved country at this moment in history from a foreigner’s vantage point. Folks who have received untold millions of unrequited aid, and with it, an equal dose of bribery, coercion, leveraging and political manipulaton from elite factions of our government and shrewd business sectors.

“They” must feel a smugness, a sense of poetic justice to witness a global power, a “shining beacon on the hill,” a grand human experiment of freedom working diligently to extinguish its own guiding light from within. Dark forces are afoot ...

They watch a crucial American political year when two caricatures of candidates base platforms on “carrion bird campaigns” ... feeding on the blood of the other’s weakness, offering vague scraps of their own design to encourage and dupe a confused and disillusioned citizenry.

They watch an uncharacteristic spoiled snot Olympic athlete tear apart Brazilian commodes one week only to twirl the hardwood on “Dancing with the Stars” the next. They witness multi-million dollar football “stars” clenching fists in defiance with muted cries of human injustice, wondering how their good fortune brought them to such a perspective. They observe our eroding national pride and cancerous political correctness. And they surely must think, “These deplorable dudes are going to hell in a handbasket!”

“They” watch and wait and listen and calculate. And like any carrion bird themselves, they preen a few feathers, snuggle in their nests, and await the implosion to come.

Fortunately, like the sandy hole available to the bashful ostrich, we have Monday Night Football, Netflix, and a bevy of fresh autumn sit-coms to keep us drugged and harmless.

It’s all about control, and “Mah fellow citizens,” as the wise Foghorn Leghorn once uttered ... we have chosen to have none. —Gary Vinson, Kalispell