My wife and I are at an age when we have begun to think (and worry) about the kind of world we will leave behind for our children and, particularly, our grandchildren.
We have experienced during our own lives, like others of our generation, our fair share of hard times and unpleasant experiences - a world war, a polio epidemic, today's Covid pandemic, a holocaust, massacres and other acts of violence fuelled by extremism - so we are not strangers to a world that is somewhat less than ideal. But we fear that there may be worse to come.
We think of global warming and climate change, the degradation of our environment, the bushfires and floods and rising sea levels, the loss of fresh air and clean water and of whole species but, serious as they are, these are not the main cause of our concern. They are natural (or, rather, unnatural) events and environmental changes. Our real concern is with unwelcome changes in our society and the way we treat each other and conduct ourselves.
One obvious cause for concern arises when we observe the United States, a country that claims to lead the world, engaged in an election that might return to the presidency someone who is, in my view, surely unfit for leadership and who - not just as a leader, but as a human being - exhibits some of the worst characteristics one can imagine.
Whatever the outcome of the US election (and we can but hope), how is it that, having had a four-year-long opportunity to judge their leader, the American people can place so little value on their democracy that they can even contemplate re-electing Donald Trump - a President who admires dictators and wants to be one himself?