Has this struck you, too?

That there truly is coming to be two Americas.

One, based on the old national ethics of work, responsibility, and reward, and another that is based on none of those things.  And that each of these two Americas is getting farther and farther apart — in large part because of the results that naturally follow these two very different approaches to living.

There have always been people who lived each way.  But never before, at least here in the United States, has there been the openly spoken lie that one's choices aren't largely what matters in determining the course of a person's life, and the resulting feelings of satisfaction and what could simply be called "well-being."  Nor has there ever before been a loud and very public insistence that the old-school "doers" should have to live daily with the hell the non-doers create all about them.

What's left, then, for us, we who are "doers"?

Nothing, it seems to me, but to gather with others who share our values and (as required) flee from these others and the world they make for themselves.

One thing I do not and will not do is feel shame about my own life and my own choices.  Nor will I deny that that is just what they were — choices — and not the result of some supposed "privilege."

Image credit: Germanname1990 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.