An Article about America

Sometimes I feel like I hate America. The blood, the tears, the war, the history. The politics, the president, the government, the bigotry. I hate the pollution and the highways, the junk food, the oil wars, the shitty foreign policy, the lack of public transport. I’m ashamed of it, of all the people it’s stomped on and killed.

I hate what’s happening in America now. I hate the deportations and the violence, I hate the fear and the division. I hate the people running the country, I hate them so much I almost hate the country.

But I don’t hate the country. I think that’s important in times like these. If you hate your country, you’ll let anything happen to it. If you hate your country, you’ll sit by and watch it get destroyed from the inside out thinking “Well, it’s about time.” You won’t vote, you won’t protest, you’ll move to Europe. You can’t hate something and also want to help it, you’ll just want it destroyed. That’s the sentiment right now, the fall of America is here, and it’s about time.

But “America” isn’t just a vague, ephemeral concept, it’s a group of hundreds of millions of people, and a huge, huge chunk of these people are in danger. Helping the people, remaking the system, is a long and tedious process of bureaucracy and red tape. The country isn’t gonna just catch fire and have to rebuild itself from the ground up. Bad shit is happening, things are being destroyed and deformed and disgraced, the basic principles that the country was supposedly founded on are being killed and grilled for dinner. That sucks, but it isn’t a revolution, it isn’t going to lead to a blank slate, and if we keep thinking like that, all it WILL lead to is a bunch of people in pain and darkness.

To help a country, to help the people in the country, you have to care about the country. You need to be angry, which means you need to be attached in some way. You need to be thinking “What the hell are these people doing to my country?” and you can’t think that if you completely shun it.

I love America. I love the Appalachians and the Grand Canyon. I love jazz and blues and country. I love Tex-Mex and diner food. I hate the history and I hate the government, but I’ll never hate the culture. I’ll never hate the people, and what else is a country but its people? I refuse to tell you that America is the American government because its not. America is the farmers and the teachers and the construction workers, the immigrants and the refugees, the people at your church and your cousin’s graduation party. And I’ll never hate them, ever.