J’Accuse: My Litany of America’s Weaknesses

and my Reasons for Moving to Italy

I was born, raised, and educated in Los Angeles. The cycle of my formative years included the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. I have traveled broadly throughout the United States, Mexico, Canada, South America, Asia, and Italy. My education was both scholastic and a matter of intellectual interest, a pursuit of knowledge which, hopefully, would entail the acquisition of wisdom.

With experience comes perspective, and from perspective comes wisdom. Based on my perspective — I hesitate to say wisdom — I have noticed with sadness but not surprise the decline of America. Our decay is moral, and from that all else derives.

Our Founding Fathers were hardly perfect, but they represented the best spirit of the times, receiving their moral impetus to separate from England due to the philosophical and political forces in the Age of Enlightenment. Did they own slaves? Yes. Were our indigenous people slaughtered? At the time, no (although that genocide would occur not many years after our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were authored). Were women treated as brainless chattels, as second-class citizens? Yes.

It was therefore a mixed bag when it came to creating a so-called United States. Based on our divergent provenance, our social, political, economic, religious…