George Burns famously said the first thing he did every morning was read the obituaries.  If he wasn't in them, he figured it was safe to get up.  I have to say that as a citizen of the United States of America, I don't much care for my morning reading material lately.

I no longer see any semblance of unity in our nation.  I see only division, discord, and animosity among our citizens.

For the vast majority of our 244 years as a nation, love of country was something you could take to the bank.  You might have liked Ike or been madly for Adlai, but your differences didn't prevent you from sitting next to each other at the church social.  Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill famously differed on most things political but were able to share a friendly beer at the end of the day.  Today, most of us would be at least a bit suspicious of any libation offered by the other side.

So, what might our obituary contain?  The United States of America: born 1776, died 2020.  Fathered by George Washington.  Betsy Ross stitched us a fine flag.

Proud family members at the time of her birth included Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many others.  Though King George of England initially opposed the union, he was later quoted as saying George Washington was the greatest man of the age.  Citizens of the young republic were nearly unanimous in their agreement with that assessment.

Throughout the more than two centuries of her life, our nation was inhabited by some of the greatest and most inspirational men and women ever to walk the earth: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and scores more.  They had their differences, but they never allowed perfection to be elevated to the point of being the enemy of the great.

Things changed in the 1960s.  Political assassination, which had always been present in the history of mankind, reached new heights of depravity, taking the Kennedys and MLK.  Dissent became weaponized and vile.  Our leaders were figuratively, and often literally, spat upon for doing the best job they could.

As we entered the 1970s, we saw needless death at places like Kent State.  Most notably, we saw Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein almost single- (or more correctly double-) handedly transform a once noble profession into what is now described almost too kindly as "gotcha" journalism.  Students of the craft saw that going after leaders for any reason, real or contrived, was the path to fame and riches.

As the next half-century unfolded, we saw many of the individuals who disliked or hated the principles on which this great nation was founded assume positions of leadership — men like John Kerry, who compared our soldiers to Genghis Khan, even if he could not correctly pronounce Khan's name.  Kerry rode the wealth of two wives, a good head of hair, a nice speaking voice, and the right set of initials to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts and on to a candidacy for president; failing that, he became secretary of state.  All accomplished by a man who threw his military medals, even if undeserved, over the White House fence.

Moving on, through the end of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, we saw our educational system devolve into a group of institutions that taught that the United States was a thoroughly racist and corrupt entity.  Again, the lack of perfection in our nation was transmogrified into a falsely and malevolently labeled evil.

So here we stand today.  We are in trouble, and the evil among us will push back hard on those good men who attempt to do something.  But we had better.  I'll keep trying, but I'll also keep reading those morning obituaries.  I pray I will not see one containing what I have just written.