Our Country 'Tis Of Thee

Remember what we got to think about when we didn’t spend so much of our waking (and sometimes sleeping) hours thinking about that racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, pathologically lying, pathologically narcissistic con man currently inhaling Big Macs in the White House? Yeah, neither do I.

What makes this moment in history particularly exhausting is the incessant drum-beat of bad news. Oh, he screamed on Twitter that the black and brown female freshman Democratic congresswoman should go back to their countries, and then doubled down in a press conference the next day, yet all you hear from GOP lawmakers is crickets? And the day before that his Vice President spent 90-seconds looking at the deplorable conditions migrants are being kept in in America’s new concentration camps, then turned his back and actually told us to not believe our lying eyes about what we all literally saw.

Like I was saying, incessant bad news. And, before anyone says it, no I do not care about how well the stock market is doing, not one little tiny bit (and, yes, I don’t care even though I have a 401K like every other poor slob who wishes they had a real pension instead). I don’t care about how “great” this economy is because it’s not great for everyone.

In fact it’s mostly just great for the already rich, the super rich and the obscenely rich. Or those who delusionally believe they’re destined to be one of those three. (It’s that insane ‘I’m poor and my whole family is poor and generations of my kin have all been poor, but when I get stupid rich I don’t want to be taxed too much”-mentality. ) Also going great? Corporations! Can someone give a workshop on how to incorporate myself so like Amazon, Chevron, General Motors, Halliburton, Netflix and 55 other U.S. companies I could have paid exactly ZERO in taxes this year? Cool, thanks. Now that’s settled.

The bad news I’m talking about is related to our shared humanity. The principles that invisibly tether us together. Love your family. Be kind to others. Take care of children. Love the planet.

These bedrocks of our shared humanity have taken a real hit these last two and a half years. And what makes it worse is how widespread the issues are. Corruption. Bigotry. Greed. Cruelty. So much cruelty. Every which way we look this administration is violating the rules, tenuous as they are, we’ve established to keep our government from becoming an unscrupulous farce of epic proportions. You know, kind of like the Trump Foundation.

Look, you individually may not care that Muslims have been banned from entering our country, patriotic trans men and women are being stopped from serving in the military, families are being ripped apart one another at the border, kids are being kept in cages without soap and toothpaste, 125 far-right judges have been given lifetime appointments and two right-wing Supreme Court Justices have been confirmed who will easily serve another 25 years each. (Not you, I know you care. But, the other you.) Or maybe you don’t care that Trump never divested from his real estate properties or never put his business in a blind trust and instead spent an extra $102 million in just two years playing golf at his own properties. I mean, they made Jimmy Carter sell his peanut farm, but whatever.

And, if you don’t care, hey - it’s still a free country. At least for a little while.

But there are no more excuses. If you support this “president,” you support a racist. You support a misogynist. You support a xenophobe. You support an absolute garbage human being. You know it, we know it. Heck, at least those dumb red hats make it easy to see you coming.

Still I guess the good news is, despite the rampant lack of empathy, general indifference and all-our bigotry of a solid 45 percent of this country, I still believe (and the math bears out) that more of us still care.

So now is the time for us to buckle down. Yes, we’re all tired. We’re all worn down. But we aren’t alone. Not at the ballot box. Not in the hall of congress. And if you’re wondering what the future of this country looks like, look no further than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib.