Letter to the (CA) Press-Enterprise
How does it end?
Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I feel like I have been suddenly transported 40 years into the future, growing old in an instant. One day it was the Mamas and the Papas and Vietnam, the next it was some hip-hop guy and Iraq.
I sometimes feel that this can't be the real 21st century. It must be some alternate future created by some unexpected quirk. Maybe the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 or the failure of President Carter to respond to the Iranians in 1980 could have been the "branch point" that sent the world spinning off in the wrong direction.
I would like to think that there is a real 21st century somewhere where pollution, poverty and disease are going down, not up. One without either Islamic terrorists or neocons, where real space stations exist, along with colonies on Mars and yes, even flying cars.
Could some quirk in Richard Nixon's 1968 election have ushered in some alternate future for planet Earth?
One of my biggest regrets is that I will not be able to see how it all turns out. Will the erosion of the American middle class be reversed or will the country become, as my father predicted three decades earlier, the BRNA -- Banana Republic of North America, a country with a few very rich and the rest very poor?
JAMES ROLLINS BAILEY
Banning
From
http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/letters/stories/PE_OpEd_Opinion_D_op_19_letters.1cde03fb.html