Hey all you friends from across the country. You won’t believe what is already happening in California or maybe you will. Gavin Newsom is expected to win the recall election. His opponents are already crying voter fraud. So in other words, coming to an election near you, we are moving towards a country where elections mean nothing. If the person you vote for wins, the other side will say they didn’t really win. For the life of me I can’t understand why those who think this way don’t see that if this becomes the norm, they will find themselves on the other side of the fence before long with their own candidates. I don’t know the answer, but welcome to the world of dictatorships. I guess we were foolish to think such a system could sustain forever. We’re only a few hundred years old. Nice experiment, anyway.

So now, like so many millions of people around the world – the lovely and intelligent everyday people in Russia I was blessed to meet, the friendly and intelligent everyday people in China I was blessed to meet – I’m going to just put my head down and try to live my best life in spite of the “leaders”, to hope the best for my children and grandchildren, and the children and grandchildren of my friends and all the future adults for whom the Constitution will be just another piece of paper under glass for future generations to marvel that there ever even was such a thing. To hope that their lives and families lives will not be broken by the evil sin of greed for power. That they will be strong when their neighbors who, for whatever reason, rat on them and they are taken away never to be seen again.

People seem to think it can’t happen here. It’s so much easier to believe that, isn’t it?