Wake Up
Every day I wake up, read the news, have a light panic attack about the direction our country is going, then try through gritted teeth and shot nerves to get on with my day. There’s really no other option. Either stay ill-informed and ignore this slide into fascism, or stay informed and feel ill. If you’re not upset and worried, you’re not paying enough attention.
I’ve been desperately trying to keep my shit together. But when I walk down the street and see an American flag proudly hung from a pole after a day of reading about everything, I can’t imagine being anything but contemptuous at this point. Being proud of this awful moment in time is repulsive. Showing support for it by flying a flag is sickening. I’ve never been less proud to live in the United States as I am now, and the bar was already subterranean.
Maybe we will one day look back on all this as just another chapter before forward progress again. Maybe this will all come to a head and we can come down from this ever-escalating high of violence and ignorance. People shooting each other, masked agents kidnapping people off the streets, sending weapons to further genocide overseas, and now talk of silencing those critical of the government should be sending shivers down everyone’s spine. Oh, I forgot, no one actually cares about any of that. Maybe we should talk about how the economy sucks, tourism has tanked, and everything costs more than it should despite false promises that it will all get cheaper.
Wake the fuck up, America.