In my life I have been accused of many things, but naivete has never been one of them.  On the contrary, I’ve always been afflicted with a maddening tendency to perceive things as they really are, while all around me are content to pretend that all is well.  It’s been a burden, especially when you work for the government.  Government functionaries who have risen to what they believe to be great heights are acutely reluctant to listen to the truth.  Because my name is Frank, I always had an overpowering compulsion to point out the obvious flaws in plans that my superiors considered to be genius.  These inconvenient truths never were welcome.  That’s probably why I never got ahead.

Now, as I rush headlong toward senescence, I’ve had an opportunity to reevaluate my beliefs.  I find myself disallusioned.  At first, I wanted to pursue a medical career.  I thought that medicine was the highest calling.  What could be more important than the practice of medicine?  There could be no better job then relieving the pain and afflictions of other human beings.  But that avocation was not to be, at least not for me, because I was incapable of mastering the mathematical skills necessary to pursue a scientific career.  In point of fact, I couldn’t understand the simple old math, let alone the New Math of algebra, geometry, and calculus.  Regardless, those who could master those skills were people I looked up to, until recently.

Having failed at science, or at least, having conceded that I would never make a competent scientist, I turned to what I considered the next best thing – government.  I took to heart Grover Cleveland’s maxim that “public service is a public trust.”  I threw myself into the study of political science.  I gained an understanding of political philosophy.

I studied history, because understanding the past was the best way to understand the present.  You can’t see where you’re going if you have no idea where you’ve come from.  As a result, I revered public servants, believing that most were dedicated to upholding our Constitution, and bettering the lives of their fellow citizens.

I grew up during a time in which people who expressed their discontent with government complained that there basically was no difference between Democrats and Republicans.  There once was something to that.  Both Republicans and Democrats once believed that there were limits to political disputes.  National security was non-political.  Politicians said, and believed, that “politics stopped at the waters’ edge.”

Before World War II there were groups like America First that advocated for isolationism.  Charles Lindbergh headed that group.  But when Pearl Harbor was attacked, all that dissent ended.  America First disappeared, and Lindbergh volunteered his services to helping America win the War.

Republicans and Democrats battled one another, to be sure.  But their differences were tempered by an underlying imperative.  The national interest.  Our disputes were about the best way to promote American values.  All public officials understood that there was a limit to public spending.  All public officials, regardless of their Party, agreed that our borders had to be secure to stop illegal immigrants from gaining access to our country.  That group once included Democrats such as Il Duce Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden.

All that changed, and not so long ago.  Democrats may be the worst offenders, but both Parties are to blame.  Somewhere along the line, we lost the notion that being an American meant that, sometimes sacrifice is necessary.  Those who fought World War II were called The Greatest Generation.  They understood sacrifice.

They were people who survived the Great Depression.  They were no strangers to sacrifice.  They didn’t expect the government to solve all their problems, and before FDR’s New Deal, government never pretended it could do such a thing.

I’m not blaming FDR.  He was confronted with 32% unemployment, widespread hunger and despair.  His New Deal programs were considered to be radical at the time, but what times they were.  Detractors labelled the programs Socialist, sure.  But when detractors suggested that the Roosevelt Administration should consider the “the long term effects of the programs,” FDR’s advisor Harry Hopkins was correct to point out, “People don’t eat in the long term.”

Throughout, America was exemplified by the rugged individual.  Americans valued hard work.  Americans looked up to those who excelled in their chosen fields.  They wanted only an opportunity, not a handout.  The American spirit was exemplified by General George Patton’s famous speech to his Third Army troops.  “When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players and the All-American football players.  Americans love a winner.  Americans will not tolerate a loser.”

Somehow, we lost that spirit.  Somehow, we forgot JFK’s admonition, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”  Our shared values have been forgotten.  We no longer value excellence.  The greatest achievers are scorned.  We no longer admire winners.  We somehow decided that the desire to win was a negative, and that we shouldn’t even keep score.

We no longer teach children to be proud to be an American.  We teach them instead to be ashamed of their country.  We no longer teach civics, history, the value of hard work, and independence.  We instill instead an expectation of dependence, and entitlement.  Is it any wonder that the American work ethic has been replaced by grievance?

Under these circumstances, it’s not surprising that young people are willing to discard all it means to be American, and are willing to scrap the system of government that has been the envy of the world, in favor of the vain promise of a nonexistent socialist paradise.

Even liberals once understood that this was a bad idea.  Let me quote the late Rob Reiner’s President Andrew Shepard from The American President, “America isn’t easy.  America is advanced citizenship.  You’ve got to want it bad, because it’s gonna put up a fight.”

Somewhere, the fight went out of us.  For today’s leftists, citizenship is a dirty word.  We lost our reverence for public officials.  We lost our respect for the government.  Maybe we just grew up, and we finally realized that the government doesn’t do things for us any more, it just does things to us.

Even my first love, for medicine has been tainted.  Before Covid, we really thought that people like Anthony Fauci served only science, and not themselves.  Now we know better.  The medical professionals we looked up to proved themselves no better than politicians, which is pretty low.  They forgot about advancing public health, and permitted crooked politicians to attempt to steal our freedom.  The medical professionals either were incompetent, or they were complicit.  There’s no third option.

So if we can’t trust our government, and we can’t trust the medical professionals we relied on, what’s left?  We once relied on the most highly educated among us to lead the way.  Now we can’t do that.  As this is written, members of the DSA are openly advocating for the cancellation of our Constitution, and the installation of a totalitarian Marxist dictatorship.  And the members of our population most dedicated to supporting this outrage are the most highly educated among us.

When the waitress and the iron worker can comprehend facts and realities that escape the Ivy League PhDs, something is seriously wrong.  To repeat, I’m disallusioned.