The country and world are in a perilous situation.  I was speaking with a woman in marketing at a retirement community about how older people are making decisions about their last years.  Has it changed since the Great Recession?  Somehow the conversation drifted into talk of war.  

The woman said she came from a military family and had a number of relatives currently serving.  And, she said, it was the consensus of those serving that we were going to have a war.  "Any particular country?" I asked.   She said, "They believe that with those two guys with their huge egos, there is no way we can avoid it."  North Korea.  She said she was scared.  I asked her if her military family members were scared.  "Yes!" was her response.  

I have no idea the ranks or branches of service of her relatives.  I do not believe that they have any insider information unavailable to the rest of us, but they probably follow events more closely than we do.  It certainly brought home to me that we plan our personal lives as if tomorrow will be very much like today.  We don't factor in nuclear war with North Korea when we plan.  I ended our conversation with, "If we have a nuclear war, retirement plans won't make much difference." 

I cannot remember any time in my life when world stability seemed so precarious, the leadership seemed so inadequate to the challenges,  and my own plans seemed so irrelevant. There have been presidents with whom I profoundly disagreed, but none who seemed so frightening and out of touch with reality, so crazy and dangerous.

I hate the tax bill currently making its way through Congress.  I think it will not only make the maldistribution of wealth worse and damage everyone but the very rich,  it will result in a deficit that will then be used to gut health care and Social Security.   We will become Kansas, a place that finally had to rectify its disastrous tax cuts that so hollowed out everything the state does, like roads and schools, that citizens admitted that their experiment had failed.  Kansas will be the United States if this continues.  

But honestly, even the decline of the standard of living in the U.S., even the status and power of the U.S. in the world in free fall, even people dying from lack of health care - all of this is nothing compared to the danger of plunging the world into nuclear war in North Korea or the Middle East.  Nobody's stock portfolio, no CEO's tax cuts, no potholes in the roads or children dying because CHIP for poor children wasn't renewed, none of it will be as important as I think it should be if parts of the U.S.or Korea or anywhere are incinerated with nuclear weapons.

What are the Republicans thinking?  Are they waiting until they get their big tax cuts to deal with a president who is losing touch with reality?  Or do they live in the small world of their personal plans like people touring a retirement facility, envisioning the next decade or two as if  life will go one pretty much as it has in the past?  Can they not see beyond the next election?  

When I look at my own life unwinding against the historical events sweeping across the globe, I am awed and very frightened.  I want my grandchildren and everybody else's to grow up and take their place in the world, to thrive and make their contributions.  

I do not know how to influence what happens.  I have written members of Congress.  I feel helpless.  

But I think it is important to keep a grip on what I actually value, what I believe, and to live each day in fidelity to my commitments.  In a time of instability, it is essential to keep as grounded as I can be.  It is important to try to shore up the institutions that have helped maintain stability.  We need people who are courageous, truthful, and are doing the best they can to make their little corner of the world supportive of people and the planet.  We can encourage our leaders to look beyond political expediency. 

I have no idea if we are going to make it through this dangerous time, but let's give it our very best shot.   

Write Staunton columnist Patricia Hunt at

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