Three women were stabbed in New York subways over the weekend: Flyover Country looks better and better

 Three women were stabbed in the New York subways over the weekend. All three were relatively young. A 19-year-old woman with stabbed in the leg while going up a stairway. A few moments later, the same assailant stabbed a 48-year-old woman on a subway platform. Shortly after that attack, he stabbed a 28-year-old woman on a subway train bound for Brooklyn.

These events were the latest in a string of subway assaults in New York City. Generally, the attacker is not apprehended. Twice in recent weeks, a subway passenger stepped in to neutralize an attacker and killed him. In both instances, the rescuer was charged with manslaughter.

Why would anyone live in New York City? Economic opportunity? Yes, salaries are higher in New York City than in other parts of the country. But the cost of living is also higher, much higher. A person living in Baton Rouge and making $50,000 a year would need to make $117,000 in New York City just to maintain the same standard of living.

New York is an excellent city for millionaires, and New York has more millionaires than any other American city. However, even millionaires are fleeing the Big Apple.  Twelve percent of them moved elsewhere in the first half of 2022.

Of course, New York has more cultural attractions than any other American locale. Do you want to attend the opera, take in a Broadway play, or look at abstract art? You’ll find more of that stuff in New York than in Omaha, Tulsa, or Chattanooga.

Personally, I hate opera, and I detest abstract art. I'm a fan of Western American art, which I can see at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth or the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa. More art museums appeal to my taste in Taos, NM than in Manhattan. And remember the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, and it's easy to find a parking space.

Fine cuisine? Yes, New York has more five-star restaurants than any other American town. But you can't beat Praise Dah Lard in Woodville, Mississippi, for fresh cracklins. The world's best chicken fried steak can be found at the Hitching Post restaurant in Ozona, Texas, not Gallaghers in Manhattan, and you don't need reservations.

I love America’s cities. I spent some of the happiest years of my life in Houston, the nation's most culturally diverse city. Unfortunately, however, the nation’s metropolises are in decline. New Orleans is now America's murder capital. Homelessness, rampant shoplifting, and empty office towers have laid San Francisco low, and people are leaving Chicago and New York by the thousands.

Americans are fleeing the cities, and they are smart to do so. Of course, the folks living in Flyover Country don't have a view of the Manhattan skyline. Nevertheless, I can personally attest that the skyscrapers of New York are no more beautiful than a view of the bloodred sun going down over Lake Mary, Mississippi.

Things fall apart: American civilization is collapsing and it's time to start paying attention

“Things fall apart," William Butler Yeats wrote in "The Second Coming," perhaps his most famous poem."The center cannot hold.”

Like many prophecies, Yeats's prediction took a long time to be realized. Now, a little more than a century after Yeats penned those words, his prophecy is finally coming true.

America, the greatest civilization in the history of mankind, is falling apart. The nation that sent 9 million men to Europe and the South Pacific during World War II and sacrificed 300,000 is crumbling. The country that accepted to its bosom the refugees from the Irish potato famine and found homes for the Vietnamese who fled the war in Southeast Asia is about to collapse.

Who would’ve thought that the United States, which conquered the Nazis in World War II, would sneak out of Afghanistan in the dead of night without bothering to tell its allies? Who would’ve thought that a nation dedicated to law and justice would allow criminals, terrorists, human traffickers, and fentanyl to flow across our southern border unmolested?

Our cities have become playgrounds for crime. Citizens who defend themselves against robbers and murderers get arrested while thugs with long criminal records roam the streets. The flagship retail stores of San Francisco are closing because shoplifting has become so rampant that a business cannot survive in one of America's greatest and most beautiful cities.

College presidents once boasted that American higher education is the envy of the world. Young people from across the globe came to the United States to study at our elite universities. Now our colleges have become insane asylums where students and professors spew racist nonsense, and greet reasoned dialogue with catcalls and profanity.

Our secondary schools have forgotten how to teach students to read, write, master grammar, and behave in a civil manner. Suppose young people who graduate from our derelict high schools wish to attend college. In that case, they must borrow extravagant amounts of money to study at institutions where the professors know nothing and have nothing to say.

In our elementary schools, so-called education experts believe it is beneficial to introduce small children to sexual perversion. Parents, who only want the best for their children, are denounced by the teacher's unions as terrorists.

A dysfunctional civilization can last a long time but cannot last forever. A nation that renounces its duty to maintain a safe and orderly society will eventually fall apart.

Like jackals stalking a wounded wildebeest, China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran wait to feast on the carrion of a rotting America.

The economy is on the verge of collapse in flyover country, where ordinary Americans strive to live decently and raise their families. If you drive through the rural heartland, the small towns look like the villages of East Africa.

Virtually every American politician is a corporate lackey. Our president is noncompos mentis--the whole world knows that. No one thinks our vice president is capable of assuming presidential duties.

Meanwhile, the financial titans on Wall Street, the media elites, and the grifters who run our universities are getting rich and gloating over their pension plans and their hedge fund profits.

The ultra-wealthy don’t care about what happens to their less fortunate fellow Americans. They abandoned their civic commitments when they banked their first million dollars. They’ve placed their riches in gold and other safe assets. Many have at least one elegant bug-out shelter, perhaps in Costa Rica or Montana.

Armed guards protect the super-rich in their private fortresses. The scamps who accumulated obscene wealth will sip fine California wine and sigh sympathetically about the people on Social Security who starve to death after the economy craters, which it soon will.

But perhaps no one will escape the apocalypse. Marie Antoinette believed she was secure at Versailles and then lost her head. The czar thought his family was well protected by an elite corps of soldiers who had sworn to protect his wife and children. And then the Bolsheviks showed up, and we know what happened.

Watch for the deluge, for the center cannot hold.

Be grateful if you live in a temperate climate where you can grow a vegetable garden both summer and winter. Be grateful if you have basic survival skills. Be thankful if you live near water.

Cling to your family if you have a family. When the apocalypse comes, all you will have are your personal resources and your loved ones.