America,
This Is *Not* Great
So here we are (as of this posting)
approaching the Fourth of July.
Once again we will be full of ourselves, and a gang of fascists will beat
their chests and raise their fists, and an orange-skinned narcissist and his
Q-tip Veep will proclaim how “great” America is.
We’re so “great”...
We’re so “great” that we lead the world in COVID-19 cases and
deaths. Not in cures. Not in lives saved. No, it is for additional
cases and deaths. In fact, we’re so “great”
that other
nations are talking about barring us from going there!
We’re so “great” that we have stopped going after terrorists and power-mad
despots around the world and instead are targeting our own citizens. In fact, we’re so “great” that we’re
creating terrorist groups out of thin air just so we can target our own
citizens.
We’re so “great” that Russia
is paying the Taliban a bounty to kill American soldiers. Now that’s “greatness”, huh? We’re so “great” that the gang that housed and
trained the 9/11 terrorists had to be financially encouraged to go after our
soldiers again! And not only do our
orange-skinned narcissist and his Q-tip Veep know it, they are silent about it
and continue to broker deals with Russia.
We’re so “great” that we can demand
the reopening of the businesses that were shut down because of the global
pandemic, even with the cases spiking higher than ever before because the
stupid masses refuse to wear masks or practice social distancing. In fact those same “great” people will
manufacture fake exemption cards and scream that they have a “breathing
problem”. Wow, how “great” their lungs
are to throw screaming
tantrums and initiate
fistfights even with a breathing problem!
Speaking of... we’re so “great” that a member of Congress threw a literal temper tantrum
in the House of Representatives. How “great”
we must be to accommodate for the infantile self-entitled like that!
We’re so “great” that we can screw over the hard-working Americans who
are struggling to make ends meet so the super-rich can keep making profit, even
during a global pandemic! Granted, that’s
nothing new for America, but to have the balls to do that in the midst of a
global pandemic that we are leading in new cases and in new deaths and still talk
up the idea of a super-recovery...
that is just next-level “greatness”!
In case you haven’t caught on yet... let’s get brutally honest here...
We are not great.
America is not great!
Let that sink in.
I’m not saying this out of spite or malice. I am saying this because I really do love
America and I am tired of the pretenses and the jingoism. I’m tired of the chest-beating lies we are
telling ourselves and each other. We
need to accept reality and not hide behind symbols.
America is not great. Accept it. You know it to be true.
In fact, right now, we are the worst.
Yes, we have done great things in the past. Wonderful things. Things we should be proud of. And every so often we do one or two great
things, like return
to space in a private spacecraft instead of bumming a ride off rockets from
other nations.
But then we do some really horrible things. Like use
chemical weapons on peaceful protesters just so a certain orange-skinned
narcissist can walk to a nearby church for a photo-op. Like dealing with protests over police abuses
with
even more heinous police abuses.
Like seeing big companies lay
people off by the thousands and then giving their CEOs huge stinking bonuses.
That. Is. Not. Greatness!
We have an orange-skinned narcissist who is screaming voter
fraud five months before a single vote can be cast, simply because some
fantasy polls show him losing. The same
orange-skinned narcissist that claims that he “made” America “great” and that
he wants to “keep” America “great”.
This is not great. This is the antic
of a fascistic man-child con-artist playing up to a gang of equally fascistic
self-centered self-important self-righteous jackasses (to describe them mildly) who collectively
wrap themselves up in the American flag and then use it as an adult diaper and
call that “greatness”.
Greatness doesn’t come from pretentiousness. It doesn’t come from self-serving abuses,
greed, and malice. No amount of
flag-posting and flag-waiving and screeching the national anthem and playing YouTube
clips of “America F-Yeah”
make any of us “great”.
Greatness comes from doing great things, not by proclamation and certainly
not for adulation. It’s not about doing
good things just to score some PR points or get a bump in some fantasy poll. It’s about doing good things because it’s the
right thing to do, period. It’s not
about putting up some gaudy building just so you can stick your name on it in
big letters. It’s about putting up a building
because it would enhance the skyline or because it would provide a function
that helps others.
Think for a minute about all the good things that get reported at the end
of the nightly news. The people who do
good things with little or no fanfare prior to that report. The ones that run their own food pantry and do
minor chores for their neighbors. The
people who do thankless work to help others, often at their own expense. That is greatness!
We have a lot that needs to be done.
We have to get off our self-righteous self-serving attitudes and swallow
our arrogance even if it gags us. We
need to shut up and mask up and get those COVID cases back down before talking
about the economy. We need to stop the
police in order to stop the protests instead of trying it the other way around
and failing miserably. “Double-down”
needs to be knocked down and knocked off.
We need to slap down the hubris and actually be humble.
You want greatness? You want America
to be great instead of “great” in pretense?
Then stop proclaiming it and start doing the good things that make a
person, a people, and a nation great. It
is that simple.
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