Grumpy on America’s Birthday

It’s July 4th. Let me wave my miniature American flag to show how grateful I am to live in the land of the free.

Oh, wait. I don’t have a mini-flag. And even if I did, I might not wave it.

While I am grateful for being born in this country and not one of the nations much worse off than ours (being born a woman or a gay in South Sudan, Iran, or Afghanistan comes to mind), I am still feeling very grumpy and pessimistic about America today.

Here are some reasons:

1. We’re keeping children in cages.

2. We have a sociopathic president who might be a rapist and who is definitely a racist.

Where do I even begin with how grumpy I am about Trump? I’ve had politicians I didn’t like before — W. comes to mind — but at least W. seemed to have a *plan* and was trying to do some *good things* and he seems like he’s probably a decent human being (i.e., not a narcissistic sociopath).

But now we have a president who tries running the country via Twitter, who is pretty clearly guilty of obstructing justice, and who is probably a rapist. Yet no matter what he does, we just can’t muster the energy or will to care.

Our national shrug at this new allegation of sexual assault goes beyond “compassion fatigue” or “Trump exhaustion.” It is a symptom of profound societal misogyny. Trump flaunts his alleged abuses in a specific cultural context that includes persistent institutional tolerance for rape as a private matter of individual wrongdoing.

CNN

3. And let’s not forget that he’s committed actions that are obviously impeachable, but we can’t impeach him, because the Republican-controlled Senate collectively lost their ability to state out loud what is right and what is wrong.

If you’re one of those people who’s like, “He didn’t obstruct justice. He might have wanted to, but legally, he didn’t,” then my response to you is, “If I *try* to commit murder but I’m too inept to do it, is that not still a crime, not to mention a morally heinous action?”

4. Saturday Night Live said it best in 2017 when they put out their “Nothing matters anymore” skit.

5. We’ve had 2,139 (and counting) mass shootings since Sandy Hook, but still can’t bring ourselves to pass tougher gun control laws.

6. We incarcerate a greater percentage of our population than anyone in the world — and oh yeah, it happens that inmates are disproportionately people of color.

7. We also execute more people than the majority of countries. The only countries who execute more? Those bastions of freedom & democracy like China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq.

7. It’s getting harder and harder to be poor in the U.S. and still have a safe place to live, a safe place to work, and a healthy life.

I have a close friend, 43 years old, who was just diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The symptoms, she told me, had been there for several years, but she just didn’t go to the doctor to see what was happening, because she couldn’t afford it. In my own newly adopted home of California, more and more of the recently homeless are homeless mainly because they simply can’t afford rent any more.

We have an income inequality problem, and it’s getting worse:

Let me try to finish on a positive note…?

Sigh. But I know it isn’t all doom & gloom. I know there are still things to be grateful for. After all, Stranger Things season 3 drops today. So there’s that.

You know, I should finish this dark and pessimistic post by saying something positive — well, a lot of positive things, actually.

The first positive thing I have to say is that I really believe in America. I believe in the America I was taught in my youth, the upstart nation in which a bunch of progressive radicals in the 18th century decided to take the ideas of the Enlightenment put forth by philosophers like Locke and actually try to build a government that was truly representative of the people’s wishes.

And I further believe that our SYSTEM of government, while messy, is still one of the best in the world.

I believe that there are a lot of really awesome people in this country who are dedicated to its good traits, and that through the hard work of those people, America has — and will continue to — course correct over and over again.

We legalized gay marriage less than 50 years after the riots at Stonewall, for example. How about that??

I believe that America has churned out some incredibly innovative people — in the last120 years in particular. I believe we will probably keep doing that, given that we have some of the world’s best universities, most creative businesses, and most compassionate organizations.

C’mon, America. Figure it out. Don’t make me wake up grumpy on the 4th of July next year.

In closing, would anyone besides me like to see a 2020 ticket of Harris & Buttigieg??