Cheer up

Lately, I have been thinking of endings. I am 79 so it is easy for my mind to drift back to October 1962, the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many of us in my college were afraid that this was when the world would end.

Here we are, almost exactly 58 years later, and once again, I, and many of my friends in retirement, are afraid the end is coming. Only this time the end won’t be the end of life on earth, but the end of that which makes life worth living, the end of Democracy, the end of a government that cares for the less fortunate, or for anyone below the top 10% or so in income and/or assets (and their families and cronies), the end of the principles that George Washington and his rag-tag army fought so valiantly for so many years ago, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Back to the Cold War: who would have guessed that, in the end, our defeat could come about partly due to one man’s fawning admiration for a tin-pot Russian kleptomaniac named Vladimir Putin?

— Fred Longacre, Hockessin