Re-posted with entire text. Sorry about the screw-up.

Growing old in an unrecognizable country.

Those of us who are part of the Baby Boom generation, now in our 60s
and 70s, no longer recognize the nation in which we grew up. We are
strangers in a land that gets stranger by the day. We believed in the
American dream. We worked hard, paid our taxes and obeyed the law -
even laws we thought were idiotic.

We married and had children. We struggled to raise families. Some of
us went to war, like our fathers and grandfathers before us. We
thought that when we grew old, there would be more for us – more than
alienation.

Most of us don’t recognize Biden’s America. Patriotism has become
passe. Our military is led by men who are social workers and
politically correct hacks. They can’t fight, but they’re great at
getting soldiers to use preferred pronouns and combating imaginary
racism in the ranks.

Giant corporations have replaced individual enterprise, which – in
many cases – has been taxed and regulated out of existence. Government
bureaucrats and corporate executives are like the pigs and men at the
end of Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”

We look in vain for a Ronald Reagan, a Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt.
Instead, we find corrupt clowns like wizened Nancy Pelosi, Commissar
Ocasio-Cortez (the Cuban pinup girl selling socialist snake oil) and
our president – a cranky septuagenarian slipping noisily into
senility.

If we’re white, we’re told that we are responsible for every problem
that plagues people of color. That’s right, we’re to blame for the
roughly 70% of black children born out of wedlock (we forced their
parents to behave irresponsibly), just as cops are to blame for the
deaths of thugs who threaten their lives.

Savages who burn down cities are hailed as heroes and celebrated as
warriors for social justice. Mayors take down statues of Washington
and Columbus and commission murals of George Floyd.

If you’re white, you’re also responsible for slavery, segregation,
the Wounded Knee massacre and Japanese Americans interned during World
War II. Racism is in our blood, they tell us. Remember, throughout the
course of human history, racism has never existed anywhere but here.

By “despoiling the earth,” we’re also responsible for climate change.
If we end up paying $7-a-gallon for gas – well, it’s our own damned
fault.

Forget racial minorities. Now, we’re told that there are “sexual
minorities” -- that people who used to be considered odd are in fact
oppressed. And that a man who thinks he’s a woman in fact is a woman –
and is entitled to use the ladies’ room with our granddaughters. And
if we refuse to accept this bizarre fantasy, we are hateful!

What passes for entertainment is sickening – all blood and gore,
sadistic killers, aliens who pop out of people’s stomachs and monsters
in various guises. We search in vain for contemporary movies with
characters we can admire or at least care about. So, we retreat to
cinema of the 40s and 50s on TMC.

On top of living in a country that’s unrecognizable, we can’t even
afford to live here anymore. You need a second mortgage to buy a
steak. A hamburger and fries at McDonald’s are a gourmet feast.
Filling up the tank is agonizing. Inflation is at a 40-year high and
accelerating, and politicians tell us it’s because government isn’t
spending enough.

Our parents could retire at 65, in the mortgage-free home they bought
in their 30s. We’re still working at 75. Retirement is a distant
dream. We’re working to provide benefits for illegal aliens, addicts
and loons who camp out and defecate on the streets and steal from the
corner store at will.

Many of us are the grandchildren of immigrants, a fact of which we
are proud. Our people helped to build this country. But we witness
with unalloyed horror the tide flowing across our southern border
unimpeded. The middle class view them as criminals, gang members and
mooches. The Democrat party sees them as voters. We can’t defend our
own borders, but are expected to defend those of distant lands.

This used to be an English-speaking country. Now ballots are in 20
languages, court interpreters are required and you press one for
Spanish.

Our feeble president (who’s been sucking on the federal teat for
half-a-century) is unable to perform his Constitutional duties, but
has successfully waged war on domestic energy production. We went from
energy independence to beggars with a gas can in a matter of months.
The corpse that walks says climate change is the biggest threat to our
national security – along with transphobia.

Washington sputters about Putin’s war on Ukraine, but imports 670,000
barrels of Russian oil a month. While he lets pipelines rust and our
oil, coal and natural gas remain in the ground, Biden pleads with the
Saudis to pump more – and is thinking about imports from the Marxists
of Venezuela and the jihadists of Iran, both Russian allies.
Apparently, oil from anywhere outside the U.S. doesn’t pollute.
Officeholders for life treat us like mentally-challenged children.
They snicker at those who pay their exorbitant salaries.

So, we limp along into old age, too proud to go on the dole and too
stubborn to just give up.

Besides, surrender now would be a betrayal of the Pledge and America that was.

Hard times create strong people.
Strong people create easy times.
Easy times create weak people.
Weak people create hard times.