The Fall Of America: We Fish, Build Prisons, Fight Bad Wars... and Play Baseball

I'm 63.

I haven't seen it all... I've just seen enough.

I sang doo-wop in the underground Long Island Railroad station on Atlantic Avenue, I took a bus when I was 11 years old to attend junior high school in Brooklyn, I fought in South East Asia, I protested with John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans against the War, I worked for John Lindsay, Eugene McCarthey, Ronald Reagan, and George Jr., I smoked, sniffed, snorted, inhaled, and shot up insulin, I played folk music while meeting my wife, "Old Blackie" while impressing my daughter, and sang songs written by those three douch brothers on disney channel to make my grand-daughters eat their dinner.

And I figured it out.

I'm watching this health care crap, followed by the report on how much we owe China, followed by our ranking in education, followed by the 2.5billon we gave a middle eastern country every year that humiliated us last week and doesn't produce any oil, and I figured it out.

We're watching the beginning of the end.

My great-grandchilden are going to go to school someday and learn about the fall of those great empires... Greece... Rome... the oximoron called the "British Empire" and... America.

They won't be telling people their forefathers were Germans or Irish, or Italians.  They will look sadly into the sky with a one hundred mile stare and say... "we used to be Americans".

And why is that.

Because all we do anymore is...  fish... build prisons... fight bad wars for free... and play baseball (and basketball...and football).

And that might not be true by the time my grandchildren have children.

Already, there may never be a shortstop that speaks english (can't capitalize that word in this piece)... Latin America, Korea, and Japan may take over the vast majority of MLB players in the next 20 years, as American schools continue to phase out athletic programs in order to save their dying schools.

There will be no baseball teams in inner city or small towns dominated by African-American or Hispanic populations. The Hispanics play soccer and, sadly, the lack of male adult representation in African-American familes has elliminated the "father teaching the son" way that baseball has always been passed down from generation to generation.

This isn't a racist statement. It's simply a fact  from someone that has covered high school sports in a rural county in South Carolina for four years, that have a student athlete percentage of over 98%.

We don't build anything in America anymore. And we raise money and donations for underprivileged families and youth...  in other countries, some of which train their children to not only hate us, but stand up against us some day.

How much sense is that?  How much steel is still made in Pittsburgh?  How many tires are still made in Akron? How many beers are distilled in New Yor City? Shall I go on?

But let's look at the up side.

How many fisherman fish for a living (and deny my son-in-law from snagging a red fish last Saturday)?  How many wars do we send our youth for no money, no oil, and not even a life insurance policy from the country we're fighting for to each soldier, sailor, or airman (by the way... the "private" armies being hired now get all this...)? And boy, have we turned prisons into a thriving business. Is there an exit on I10, from Jacksonville to Los Angeles that doesn't have a prison on the side of the highway?

And we play baseball.

For now.

Mack