We Are America

(Photo courtesy of Euclid Library)

This is a rant, and I apologize deeply for doing this to you, but I feel like it has to be done. Someday maybe I'll have the composure to organize these thoughts into something a little more structured, but for now, please enjoy. I am writing about Republicans and while this is a kind of harsh post, I also want you to know that I recognize that there are many rational and intelligent Republicans out there. I'm aiming to provoke thought not offense. 

  We are America; land of the free, home of the brave. We believe in democracy, power to the people and equality. We have constitutional rights and a voice in politics. We are doing a lot of things right. We have a lot of great people and a lot of great minds...

Yet if you look up for a second and put a blinder on the nationalistic beliefs we love to call patriotism, you start to wonder if half the people in this country even know what those phrases mean.

Freedom of religion does not give you the right to be a bigot. The right to bear arms does not give mean you should arm an entire country. Equality does not mean vote for whatever regime would benefit the next straight, white, male hedge fund manager. Democracy does not give you a right to stop thinking, to stop working for better, because you have the power to keep your white picket fence life comfy. It’s a twisted sense of reality that threatens to destroy everything and causes conflict when there is no disagreement. 

The confederate flag is not a symbol of the south, it is an excuse to continue promoting racism under a veil. Donald Trump is not a political figure but an excuse to let yourself continue thinking all your prejudiced thoughts without guilt. War is just an excuse to turn a problem of right and wrong into a competition of win or lose. Well, I’m done with the trigger-happy excuses.

There are people in this country who would rather have the “freedom” to arm every nutcase and maniac in this country than create a country you don’t need to be armed against. Because nothing screams freedom more than gunfire and terror.

These people don’t think. They are too lazy, too shortsighted, and completely unable to think something through rationally, completely and independently. They are brainwashed. And it’s infuriating. My blood boils at every unfinished and halved ideal they prop up. I hate that they fail to think rationally. I can’t stand that they fail to see any consequences past their conceited small world lives. I have a hard time ignoring their tunnel vision, the way they pick and choose which facts they take and which to ignore. I hate that people like this have power to change the fate of a country, the fate of the world.

Yet this whole country is under their thumb. Sure, there are great people running our country, but with an entire political party driving off the rails, they make progress a slow and tortured process. Thwarting every good idea anybody can come up with half lies about pro business and American pride.  They are slowing us down. 

They don’t deserve America. They don’t even deserve the twisted idea they like to call freedom. Because their bigoted, sexist, racist, egotistical thoughts aren’t freedom. They lost the meaning while fighting for it. 

 I hate that someday, my friends and I will be the ones suffering for their stupid decisions. I hate that we will be the ones to suffer from their consequences. I hate that those most effected by their ignorance have the least say. I hate that they fail to see that. I’m the one who’s going to suffer when we tear the world apart with bullets simply because we have the right to bear arms. My generation is going to have to deal with shreds of the world because we were too freaking lazy to deal with climate change from the beginning. I’m the one effected because an entire nation turned a blind eye in the name of religion. 

We would rather bask in the comfort of today than fight for a better tomorrow. We would rather sit back and watch disaster strike than change our lives to stop it from happening. It’s sick. 

This country is not perfect. I don’t want to hear your ‘murica pride as you clutch you loaded hand gun for protection against the crazy people you worked to arm. I don’t want to see you under the flag as you elect bigoted racist leaders. I don’t want to listen to your unthoughtful speeches about how you don’t want Syrian refugees in this country when you and your little suburban house have never seen anything close to what they’ve lived through.

How is that people in America can be lounging on a large squashy couch their eyes glued to one of their big screen TVs while there are people out there with no place to sleep at night. How is that America can be battling big macs and obesity while there are orphans that go hungry for weeks. How is it we promote large companies and billionaire CEOs rather than helping with the people who struggle to support their family. And how can we do all this without blinking an eye towards those less fortunate.

Maybe if we stopped wasting resources on building useless plastic merchandise, and engineering the self twirling spaghetti fork we could put more effort into bringing everyone up to a higher level.

Stop pushing the people on the top up higher and higher and leaving those that could use a helping hand to fend for themselves. 

I hate that people spend hours a day shooting players in a video game, and then lose their sense of reality when it comes to real world situations.

I am both grateful but a little disgusted that I am a part of a school district that supplies apple macbook airs to every student and have large theaters and aquatic centers built into our school buildings, but there are people in other countries that have to learn in secrecy in the dead of night. I hate that I can take that for granted.

We need to start recognizing that those who are fortunate enough to spend hours a day stalking celebrities on tumblr, that we need to be do something to help people drowning in the ocean to escape the terror ripping apart their country. We need to recognize that if we have seven guest bedrooms and a long front lawn, we need to be bring these people into our homes.

But we’re not. We are content to stuff ourselves full of food on thanksgiving, ski in our free time and create long christmas lists for the upcoming holiday season, where we will spend $465 billion dollars on useless wants, when there are people who couldn’t even imagine those luxuries.

I might not be filled with the patriotism you were expecting. I'm not saying this because I hate America, which I don't. I'm saying this because I think we can get better. I'm saying this because in order to fix something you have to understand the problem. I'm saying this to give you the perspective of a fifteen year old girl with no say in where this country is going. I'm saying this because we've got a lot of things to fix. But we can do it. We just have to start.


This is America. But it doesn't have to be...


Sorry about that,

Victoria