precarious times?

Perhaps "precarious" is the word I'm looking for, but to be honest, I don't know. Is it truly a precarious time in America or am I just as aging old fart seeking to pin my own tail on the donkey of the times? It feels to me as if democracy, by whatever rag-tag definition, is under an assault that opens the doors to neo-cons, dictators and others whose self-interest is barely concealed ... perhaps like me, who would love a little sense of rest and hope and smiling.

Of late, my emails have included various attachments -- some quite thoughtful -- about the dwindling of democracy at the hands of those who are so rampantly mediocre.

But "precarious" presupposes that there is still some purchase point, something to be held as credible and worthwhile. OK ... if this is true, what standard remains?

Day by day, as the 2016 presidential race lumbers along, the crumbling of whatever that purchase point is seems to gather steam. Donald Trump, a businessman who never held elective office, nourishes a skepticism that is given throat by the negativism of a Republican Congress and an electorate being told that "the great recession" (read latest depression) is over... even as they live paycheck to paycheck when they're lucky enough to have a paycheck. Hillary Clinton promises to see her way forward with a continuation of the 15-year-old war in Afghanistan and a kid-glove environment for the money-makers.

It is depressing to wake up to the political tableau ... just the daily waking up and going about whatever business anyone has. The country shares less and less even as the world is increasingly described as "interconnected" -- a descriptor that suggests getting along even as dictators in the Middle East slaughter and dispossess millions and the likes of Donald Trump proclaim their own virtues..

Things are a mess, or that's the way it feels to me. And I hunch that the only way out is through a violence and disruption that will be literally bloody. I hope not, but I suspect it.

I haven't got the energy or will to adduce the evidence that has slipped through my email slot. As a result, I am reduced to what I dislike -- unsubstantiated opinion and belief. Oh goody -- another Donald Trump supporter; another Hillary Clinton apologist.

PS. Australia's decorousness was put to the test Thursday when, since parliamentarians declined to disagree, a description of Donald Trump as  “a 'revolting slug' unfit for public office” was recorded as approved in New South Wales.