It’s A Dark Day to Be An American
Welcome to another four years of being ashamed of this country.
I wake at 5:32am and scroll to see the election results — Trump wins the U.S. presidency — and I’m sick, but not surprised. Because it’s a familiar sickness. We’ve been here before. We wake to realize our country is filled with so much rage and a desire for a time when hate was common but whitewashed. When America was allegedly great because white Christian men held dominion and it’s those men, and those who want to perpetuate this fiction, who enrage me.
I’m admittedly part of this hate. And this rage. And this shame.
I watch a documentary about a family of six living in a motel in Florida. The strip is rife with fast food restaurants and five-star family fun. This is the home of Disney, after all, and while a single mother works two jobs another family tries to feign normalcy in conditions that are anything but.
The children ask questions. Why are we living in a motel? What happened to our house? Will I ever have my own room? Why can’t we go back home without realizing the horrific reality that this is home.
I could quote you statistics, but this story isn’t about plotting a through-line from the rugged individualism in the 1920s and 30s to the 2008 recession and the havoc it…
