Always an ambivalence about the US. Indeed, they were instrumental in developing pennicillin, e.g.; but why go from there, Jack, to include it in a list that definitely implies it was one of their discoveries?: a typical American view on the world {& only too typically true of a British failing, moreover: we are adept these days at failing to advantage our pioneering attributes, unlike 200 years ago!}.

BUT, as my late wife Valerie frequently observed, the greatest country in the world, with the most portentous & pompous Constitution predicated on the rights of man an all being created equal, was actually established on a firm base of genocide & slavery.

The last time I wrote that, a while back, Ebbie denounced it as "piffle". But it is, unhappily, not piffle, but an incontrovertible fact which a million repetitions of "piffle' can do nothing to alter.

Love the US just the same, and have always been happy there & hospitably received and treated on my many visits: but it is not a blind love I have for you all.

Know yourselves.

~Michael~