This Independence Day I find myself more full of sadness than on any other July 4. Yesterday, I was washing dishes in the kitchen and in the background was news of yet more mass shootings in various parts of the country. Out of the blue, completely unexpectedly, I got emotional and began to shed tears. I had suddenly been hit with profound feelings of sadness, helplessness and despair over the total sum of what the USA has become. Have we gone mad?
Mass shootings are now as much a part of the American weekend as grilling burgers in the backyard. But that’s not all the lament.
I feel sad and angry about the availability of firearms and the people who mow people down without a second thought. The pace of firearm production is actually accelerating. And don’t fall for that mental illness nonsense. This is a classic straw man fallacy.
I feel sad and angry about The Savage Six on the Supreme Court. Just outright wickedness and cruelty. The homophobic website woman did not even have standing. The case should have been thrown out, but the Savage Six could barely wait for a chance to pounce. And affirmative action, gone. And a woman’s right to choose her future, gone.
I feel sad and angry about the governors of various states who wake up every morning deciding how they can make life as miserable as humanly possible for LGBTQ+ people. Some cohorts of the MAGA group actually believe that the “problem” of trans people is actually more of an urgent concern for the USA than inflation, unemployment or race relations.
Sad and angry about high maternal death rates among black women, the absence of health care for all, the chasm between the miserable poor and the happy rich.
It’s the nagging feeling of doubt that much can be done that generates this suffocating feeling I’m experiencing. They say “vote.” Yes, I vote, and yet the US runaway train continues to hurtle down the tracks with no brakes.
I apologize I have no uplifting message this Independence Day.
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It's hard, maybe inappropriate, for me to comment, Kwei, from all this distance away, and I share your grief with how things are going over there. Maybe President Trump looms ahead in the future to make matters still worse. Somehow, though, the US has been through a lot and does have an intrinsic resilience. We can only hope that this will carry it through the current madness and bring it out the other side.
ReplyDeleteI have felt sad about the U.S. spiraling down and down for quite some time. I love my country and how it was progressing, righting past wrongs, coming closer to our ideals. And yet two years ago, my husband and I moved to Portugal. We are not planning to return, except to visit one of my husband’s brothers who has serious health problems.
ReplyDeleteThis pendulum too will swing. What the fascist Republicans are doing are acts of desperation. They can only win by lying and cheating. I weep too for the suffering they are causing. But in the end they will lose. They are already grossly out numbered. Truth is the daughter of time.
ReplyDeleteThe above from AAo
DeleteCouldn't agree more, AmA, "This, too, shall pass," and “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Take heart, stand fast, and let the fleas and ticks be scoured away by the sands of time.
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