Farewell USA?

I seem to recollect that photography was not permitted in the glorious, Frank Lloyd Wright designed, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York but anyway I managed this one photo back in 2012. I vaguely remember security guards asking patrons not to take photos of the paintings with their phones. They have probably given up on this hopeless task now.

I last visited the US in May 2017 when we drove the Mississippi River Road from New Orleans to Memphis and then on to Chicago. I fear that may well have been my last ever trip to the US. I cannot see Covid-19 free travel being possible before 2022 and I foresee getting travel insurance for the US at my age may well be impossible or at best prohibitively expensive. 

I also fear that the US may be on the verge of imminent collapse. It sounds melodramatic but four years of the Trump presidency have totally undermined the rule of law and the institutions of government. Extensive civil strife or even a civil war is a real possibility if Trump does not win the forthcoming election and if he does win I see the US rapidly becoming an authoritarian neo-fascist state. This would have terrible implications for the US and the whole world.

I was bought up to look upto the USA as a shining example of democracy-a beacon of freedom- and this was a widely held view. Uncle Sam was the strong and benevolent leader of the free world. That view has certainly changed. Now the USA is seen by the citizens of many countries as a tragic, failed state unable to contain the Covid-19 pandemic and apparently willing to let its citizens die from the virus at a rate not equalled almost anywhere else the world and presided over by an appalling narcissist who delights in insulting the USA's friends and allies and who actively courts the affection of leaders of authoritarian states. It is beyond tragic.

So sadly I fear that my days of visiting the USA are behind me. It's not all bad news. At least I won't ever have to face waiting in a line for two hours at immigration control at Los Angeles Airport to enter the USA again.