Have had more time on my hands than usual and this is what I saw:
Been taking google road trips through the small burgs and towns across the US. This is a way to see the actuality of a town without the gloss of the chamber of commerce or the real estate agent.
Find a small town, go to the street view and then just roam the streets up close. What I am seeing is the degeneration of roads, shopping districts, the rustiness of cars, perfectly good businesses empty and up for sale, closed stores and the ones that are open and not part of a chain barely hanging on and not in the "prime" shape you would have seen 50+ years ago.
where there is government work or international industries you see areas of a town with affluence in housing and services, but just as much to find towns where the local plant is gone and the houses are fading fast along with what is left of the man street.
Despite what politicians and economists tell you, the heart, the heartland of America is ailing. There may be value in the new suburbs around metropolitan centers that are managing world wide trade, but the actual homes and towns, schools, parks, local restaurants etc. of that blue collar middle class is in far worse shape than the governments numbers crunchers would belie.
This, far more than an election, states what is painfully obvious. The America that anyone over the age of 50 remembers no longer exists except in our memories. I do not know why we even worry about "saving" the nation when the nation is long gone and areas such as Ferguson, of striated, dystopian and never to be healed amalgams of antipathy is what we have allowed to evolve before our eyes at the hands of the progressive intelligentsia that told us they could see the future and it was good.
After observing the news for the last few weeks, I am of the opinion that the Armageddon is past due if it is, in fact, coming and there is no reason to prolong the wait. it is rotten to the core and serves no purpose.
I am off to take street views of the small towns in the previous soviet satellite states to see what has been happening there.