How did we get here? Were we always here? How did everything get so fucking politicized? How is wearing a mask to protect yourself and the lives of your fellow American citizens from a deadly virus an “anti-American” thing? How is wearing a mask to try and thwart a virus, which couldn’t care less who you voted for in the last election and which has caused the entire world, not just us, to pause, a political display? When did we become so selfish and entitled that we couldn’t be bothered to do the least we could do (wear a mask) to prevent more of our fellow Americans from dying (130,000+ and counting)? Why can seemingly every other country in the world band together long enough to snuff out the worst of the virus while our cases are exploding out of control? How is saying that “Black Lives Matter” mean that you’re a communist and you hate America? Why does the president continue to label any opinion or belief “anti-American” if he doesn’t ascribe to it? Why do we continue to try and avoid the uncomfortable truth that our country is still significantly affected by white supremacy? Why are we not more alarmed when our president decides to use Nazi imagery in his re-election campaign by selling these t-shirts?
For reference, here’s what our Presidential Seal looks like:
Why do we tolerate our president saying he wants to save Confederate monuments and chastising NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag, a known symbol of hate? Why do we allow the president to say that “Black Lives Matter” is a “symbol of hate” while he’s advocating for actual symbols of hate? Why are we not angered by the irony of the president calling the people who tear down Confederate monuments “anti-American” when, in fact, the monuments themselves are literally anti-American as they honor people who tried to secede from America and who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans? Why do we so quickly move on from our outrage over the president planning his Republican nomination victory speech in Jacksonville on the anniversary, to the day, of a horrific Ku Klux Klan attack called “Ax Handle Saturday” which happened right there in that very city of Jacksonville, essentially commemorating the event?
Why do we allow Facebook (mostly just Mark Zuckerberg) to continue denying they have any responsibility for what is likely the largest collection of hate speech, hate groups and misinformation on the internet? Why do people believe them when they say it’s a First Amendment issue (it’s not, Facebook is a private company and can allow/disallow whatever it would like on its platform. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, religion, press, peaceful assembly, and the ability to criticize the government, but ONLY between citizens and the government. It also does not apply to violent threats, false or misleading claims/statements or have anything to do with private companies like Facebook)?
Why does it seem is there is no tragedy large enough to illicit real change (I hope the current George Floyd/Black Lives Matter Movement will break this trend)? Why after the Parkland school shooting (and Sandy Hook, Columbine, and on and on, unfortunately), the El Paso Wal-Mart shooting, the Vegas mass shooting, the Charleston church shooting (and on and on, unfortunately), have we still not made any real progress on updated, common sense gun laws? Why does America, which has under 5% of the world’s population, have almost a quarter of the world’s prison population? Why are we OK with the fact that our health care system ranks as low as 37th best in world? Why does our school system lag so far behind the rest of the world, with the U.S. ranking as low as 38th in math and 24th in science? Why are we OK with our country’s wealth gap, with the top 10% of earners holding 70% of our nation’s wealth while the bottom 50%, half the country, holds just 1.5% (numbers per the U.S. Federal Reserve)?
I’m not saying all this because I hate America. I’m saying all this because we can and should be better than all this. I love my country but I’m sad to see the state of it. It’s always been far from perfect, but things feel near catastrophic at the moment. We’re so divided on everything that we all can’t even just agree that “Hamilton” is awesome these days. I’m (half) Native American (don’t even get me started on Columbus… thank you for not getting me started), so (half) my roots were in this land long before 1492 or the establishment of Jamestown 100+ years later, and I’m not going anywhere. Even just the fact that I can write something like this blog post without the fear of being jailed, or worse, is worth acknowledging (though I am a bit worried the Russian trolls who took over my blogspot.com blog will come back. True story, by the way).
So, please Americans, be better. Care about your fellow citizens, and wear a mask. Care about your fellow citizens, and acknowledge and help take down white supremacy. Care about your fellow citizens, and support free speech while stomping out hateful and divisive rhetoric and false narratives. Care about your fellow citizens, and support reversing the expanding wealth gap by supporting changes to our tax structure, minimum/living wage increases, our health care system, racial inequality, etc. Care about your fellow citizens, and support sending fewer Americans to prison. Care about your fellow citizens, and support implementing common sense gun laws so we can stop having these all too common mass shootings. Please Americans, remember, caring about your fellow citizens not only saves and changes lives but doesn’t infringe upon your personal freedoms in any way. It’s simply the right thing to do.