To the rest of the world, please excuse our mess

Please excuse our mess here in America. We seem to be having a problem in dealing with the pandemic.

We should know better, we have demonstrated to the world many times before how to do this right. Unfortunately we seem to be caught up in a nexus of conflicting ideals — individual rights, state’s rights and the role of central government. Add to that a dash of ineffective and incompetent leadership at various levels of government, partisan politics, a recent significant recession we just overcame and cover it all with social and moral short comings that have been festering for too long and are now rising to the surface that we no longer can ignore.

No wonder things look bad for us now. We deserve the criticisms from our global brethren, and we have no one to blame but ourselves for the mess we are in.

Despite appearances and our recent bad behavior, I am confident that we will overcome the challenges we now face. America is and always will be a work in progress. The initial designers of our unique experiment in democracy — as imperfect as they were — never intended it to be perfect or finished. It was meant to serve as a guide to us and the rest of the world to see for themselves how wonderful these principles are when they are exercised properly and what happens when they are neglected, warped or abused.

Americans know we can do better and we will get back on the right track. We know how, we’ve done it before. We will clean up our mess and clean up our act. We will repair relationships with our fellow citizens of the world we share so we can continue to live and work again in harmony for the greater good.

This world is the only place we now can call home so we better learn how to treat it and each other better. We have no place else to go. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Tim Ward, Simsbury