A nation on the verge of collapse

Sam Smith -  Although other presidents in the past hundred years - including Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter - got some Gallup poll results below those of Donald Trump, these were problems with policies and not competency or decency. With a news career that started in Washington over 60 years ago,  a father who worked for FDR, and some good college history books , I can assure you that there has been no one as incompetent and dangerous to constitutional democracy as Trump. 

While there may be little prospect of a second Civil War there is very clearly the danger of a collapse of the core systems we have enjoyed for 250 years. We are not currently treating this as the crisis it is thanks in no small part to a media that handles impending disasters as just more of the morning news and President Trump as a top politician. 

But the truth is that we have never had such a liar in such a high position nor one who even starts major wars without obeying constitutional procedures. And he gets away with this thanks in no small part, not only due to a flawed media but because of a Supreme Court whose majority see themselves as the country's real rulers, and a Congress that lacks the will to defend not only its country but its own constitutional powers. 

The other major factor in this crisis is the way America has culturally collapsed in past half century. No longer defined by community, ethnicity, religion and other aspects of intrinsic culture, it has become dominated by the values and instructions of huge corporations, television, the Internet and major money, all increasingly the property of a small minority. 

America is no longer the place it was when I started as a young journalist. Which is one reason why, nearly two decades ago,  I moved to a small town in Maine where I feel not only more American again, but more human as well. Life here is not defined by huge institutions but by decent real people. 

I started coming to Maine in the summer when I was nine years old. Nearly eight decades later it still enjoys the values and the habits that once defined a later collapsing place known as America. 

To survive this crisis, we must make our nation and its leaders as good as those we  find in our communities.