I find myself staring at a blank page, wrestling with an unusual case of writer’s block. Perhaps it’s the relentless chaos of this administration, the calculated bombardment of daily outrages meant to overwhelm our collective attention span, or simply the exhaustion that comes from watching what feels like the inevitable collapse of the American Empire. After all, we’re right on schedule — most empires don’t make it past their bicentennial.

This Memorial Day, like every year, I attended the ceremony at Eternal Valley, a beautiful tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms. As I watched us honor the fallen, a troubling question kept surfacing:

Is this what they died for? A nation so fractured that we can barely agree on basic facts? A government drowning in debt while our credit rating gets dinged by all three major agencies due to decades of failed leadership and partisan policies?

The irony isn’t lost on me that we honor those who died defending democracy while actively watching it crumble from within.

Take the absurd spectacle of groups like Moms for Liberty, who claim to be “protecting children” while fixating on drag queens and transgender youth as existential threats.

Meanwhile, the actual leading cause of death for children in America? Firearms. Not drag story hours. Not transgender students using bathrooms. Bullets. Real, deadly bullets that tear through young bodies in classrooms, playgrounds, parks, malls and........

© Santa Clarita Valley Signal