‘...Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.’

Because US civic instruction in elementary school now consists of browbeating children with academically incompetent rants about America's alleged founding in 1619 as a nation built on the backs of slaves, most young people probably have no idea what the Declaration of Independence is. Even many of us who were fortunate enough to learn about it in school might not remember the list of specific grievances offered to the King of England as justification for his colony's decision to "alter or abolish" the colonial government and to institute a new one.

I think most people will be surprised to learn that the first three grievances are actually complaints, not of excessive royal oversight, but rather of a lack of adequate governance:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

There are other complaints, of course, but it's interesting -- surprising, even -- that the failure to allow the necessary legal framework to be put in place so as to create a well-ordered society was so prominent on the list of objections to the king's rule.

My cousin Jack, one of the young people this old empty-nester has the pleasure of tutoring and pseudo-parenting on a regular basis to fill the peaceful void left by the departure of his own thriving and independent children, is partial to Chipotle cheese quesadillas. I don't mind an occasional Chipotle burrito myself, so I sometimes pick up dinner as a treat for both of us, something to lighten the burden of my favorite/his least favorite subject, math.

For reasons, I'm sure, Chipotle won't let you order a cheese quesadilla at the counter; you have to order it online. I don't like ordering online but, since that's how it must be done, that's what I do. Then I swing by Chipotle on my way to Jack's house and grab the bag that's waiting for me on the pickup-and-Doordash rack just inside the door.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped at Chipotle for the usual, and saw that the rack was empty. That surprised me, as I was a few minutes late already and the order should have been waiting for me. The young man at the register saw me coming, guessed what I wanted, and asked if I was there to pick up an order. I gave him my name, and he fetched my bag of food from the kitchen.

I stopped on the way out the door, walked back to the counter, and asked the fellow why the rack was empty -- though I was pretty sure I knew the answer. "Because people are stealing the food," he confirmed.

I called my kid brother John on the way to my car to rant just a little. This kind of thing bugs me, this breaking down of order. My Chipotle is in a town of 20,000, not a place with a lot of crime -- or not noticeable crime, anyway.

Fast forward to yesterday, and I get a call from the same kid brother while I'm walking into Lowe's to pick up a couple of carbon monoxide detectors. John's calling to tell me that he just left his local grocer, an Albertson's in Albuquerque, where he couldn't find an empty shopping cart. Why not? Because, the person at customer service told him that "they've all been stolen."

Small stuff, I know. Just a few broken windows on the grime-encrusted façade of civilization.

But we all know it isn't small stuff. It's the tip of an iceberg. It's the dorsal fin of something ravenous.

It's what we get when we elect people whose sympathies and interests are more closely aligned with those of civilization's enemies than with our own.