The United States on many levels is a messy affair. Often this plays towards its strengths - a heterogeneous glob of skin colors, backgrounds, opinions, personalities, and characters over the past 240 years has helped shape a cultural, political and economic haphazard semi-benevolent, oft-belligerent empire not seen on this planet before its creation.
We would be idiotic to think that these past two centuries, and nearly a half, have been without some outstanding contradictions. We could pornagraphicly chart how glorious words from the Declaration of Independence have been ******, again and again, including “all men are created equal” and how people have the right to “throw off such Government[s], and to provide new Guards for their future security” when such governments do not serve the will of the people.
We could start with how a great portion of the founding fathers were slave holders, then we could move onto less touchy subjects like most were rich and all were white (and had penises). Sure, we could write that stuff off - you know - the times, the course of history, blah, blah, blah. And all that is true. America has had its Frederick Douglass, its Martin Luther King, its Sacagawea, and Chief what's-his-name, along with all those famous Latinos and Asians they teach us about in grade school we remember so well.
But then, we turn towards those other two hundred odd years where the United States’ culture and politics hung black men and women from trees like strange fruit or burned them alive atop hateful lumber, committed genocide against Native Americans and buffalos with guns and blankets, while also overtly and covertly murdered and overthrew leaders and regimes in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East for resources, power, and influence. Then there was that whole thing where we herded Japanese people into pig pens before we massacred somewhere around 200,000 of them on some island in the pacific with big bombs we had immigrants create for us. To be fair, they started it.
We could write that stuff off - you know - the times, the course of history, blah, blah, blah. And that’s true.
Lean in a bit more and you’ll smell a bit more sweaty *******. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps kinda stuff. Just like how the current President started off with nothing but a multimillion dollar loan from his daddy to kick off his economic empire. Just like how anyone can succeed in America as long as you work hard, which is why minorities in this country control a majority of multinational corporations, hold a majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives and why every white kid in America grows up aspiring to be either Black or Latino because their parents say “it's for the best.” Just like how America has the best health care, that’s why America has the lowest infant mortality rate and the healthiest people who never ****** each other with 2nd Amendment guns or commit suicide after killing their families or classmates.
Are you writing this down? I am.
Perhaps we could turn to ourselves (I’ll play the overly judgmental overlord who doesn’t give a **** about your feelings or my own personal hypocrisy) ready? How about the shallow puddle of desire we hold in our hands that we mindlessly scroll through and tap and caress and coddle and cling to like an obsessed sociopath? That thing that connects us but deletes us from the here and now? That thing that traps us into a circle of impersonations of ourselves?
Hold your head just this way, smile just like that, clench the jaw just so, a little less cleavage, a little more flex and tuck, bribe the kid for a smile and - SELFIE! I am a happy, successful, wealthy, witty, charming, sassy, badass ******* genius party hound, bound for success and glory and please like this post or photo or confession or rant or meaningless comment about my mundane life. I need to stay connected.
Let’s drop the phone. I’m still the overlording hypocrite. How about we talk about the polished mirror we strap to our heads by leather, stick, and string and leave dangling before our every step and twinkling eye? We ***** and moan about the drive to work, the long flight, the uppity moronic ******* at the office. On the other side of the mirror a drone strike just killed a mother’s son. Did you vote, do you care? We bemoan the ****** pay and mindless work we’re given in a corporate service driven economy lorded over by overpaid ******. Move the mirror and look in the distance, a dictator just mass murdered his own people. We wallow in self-pity, no one sees our potential, our worth. At the stoplight downtown, hold the gaze of your fellow American asking for a buck - what’s he worth? What’s yours and why?
Okay, how about this? We stroke the ***** and ***** of our own deflated morality by inflating the stupidity of others. Mr. Jones lost his job and slept with a woman not his wife - oh, my. Mrs. Jones chopped off his ****, how unladylike - oh, my. This might be where we avoid the mirror we’ve strapped to our heads by stick and string. I’d never do that, never done anything like it. He deserves what he got and she’s off to the psych ward for sure. Yet, we guzzle down the *** of lurid stories steeped in “other” people's faults. We’re all in the **** video now, and everyone’s acting *****.
Let’s not pretend anymore. Humanity is America and America is messy and often ugly. But there, in the chaos, gleams an oxymoronic hope to do better. To be better. I am as small as my mistakes and shortcomings but as towering as my dreams and ideals. We cannot change or erase our past stupidity, but we can be so much more tomorrow. I want to be an empire of hope, a mountain of kindness, a river of acceptance, a field of peace. A good father to my daughters, a loving partner to my wife. A man that lives.
Let's not write that future off as blah, blah, blah.