Strengths of nation

A good thing coming out of the Trump presidential era for me has been the identification of the poles comprising my long-term bipolar disorder: The poles are faith versus politics, two major areas of my life often in conflict, between which I often bat back and forth.

I’ve always suspected the seeds of my disorder were sown with the assassination in 1963 of John F. Kennedy, then of Martin Luther King Jr., then of Bobby Kennedy, then of another civil rights leader, all in the ’60s. I left the country for a year in 1968 and returned in 1969 to what seemed to me a different country. Everything from hippy influence to mood to music to drugs to manipulation styles and political fraud and, most of all, to the realization that “we” the people were steadily growing into a nation no longer to “we” but to “I” with self as central interest first.

Questions: From 1941 to 1961, what do you consider the strengths of America? What would you do to destroy those strengths? What would you consider the weaknesses of America during that time? What would you do to exploit those weaknesses?

Present now seems to be another mantra, likely planted by external forces among all ages: “I do not keep up with the news because I cannot do anything about it and I’d rather be peaceful and happy.” Explain the early mandate of privilege of American government that purported a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Does not your withdrawal provide space for foreign invasion, of which we already have ample? Is democracy really on its way out?

JUDITH BAUM

North Little Rock