Before I moved in with my daughter in the adjoining town, the house where I previously lived was right in the path of the daily afternoon exodus of kids from the nearby high school, which was about 75 percent Black and 25 Hispanic. Whenever I sat on my porch and watched this homeward bound, rag-tag parade of scruffy, loud, unruly students, my impression was that these kids came in all shapes and sizes. Just as many were tall and skinny as average. Only a few were actually obese. The basketball team which is the main source of pride for this school is, of course, made up of lean, lanky giants.
A true conspiracy was exposed when the tobacco companies were outed for increasing the nicotine content in cigarettes in order to addict smokers, a large number of which are concentrated in the black urban areas. There were also claims of there being an overload of billboards glamorizing alcohol consumption in the inner cities. Maybe there is, indeed, a plan afoot to gradually put these poor denizens of the ghetto out of their misery by making hazards to their health habitual.
But weight-conscious young white kids, girls in particular, also pay for their obsession with being thin. They either become the victims of eating disorders or the objects of ridicule and bullying for not fitting the desired image. White teen-agers are also more into recreational drugs than their black peer group.
America is so screwed up on so many levels. Rome wasn't built in a day, or did it fall in a day. The decline was gradual, appearing right before the eyes of its citizens who had become so inured in the decadence that they didn't realize the empire was on a collision course with ruination.
In the political arena, the crazed Republicans, aided and abetted by the dazed Democrats, are leading the nation down the path to doom. The "United" States will become a misnomer, and America, rutted by the schism of race, will implode.
I'm weary. I don't really care if these predictions come true or not...