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“A Letter to My Country”

Dear America, I get it. You just don’t care.

You don’t care about anything, or anyone, except yourself.

And I don’t mean your wife, lover or significant other,

Your kids, your pets, not even your parents, and certainly not those people you deign to call your friends.

No, you care about you. It’s always been about you, exceedingly you.

The care and feeding of you has been your only priority, since you first learned how to get out of yourself and escape the world set before you.

They always talk about how you can be anything you want in this world, an idea now scoffed at by you, because you didn’t get everything you wanted, as if what you achieved was nothing in the scheme of things.

Things, yes, let’s talk about those things. Items, toys, tools, these things you surround yourself with, to let everyone know how great you are. Dig you, dig your great big sport utility vehicle, your gold credit card (or rather, your gold Starbucks card today), the money you throw around that doesn’t exist, the woman or eye candy you have attached to your hip, and the offspring you call your children.

Let’s see more pictures of your home on Instagram, all the big, cool, neat things you have, all of which you can tell us the cost of, but neglect to discover the value of these things.

Let’s begin your day, with your multiple Facebook and Twitter postings how God has a plan for us, how this is the best day of the rest of your life, and how the next one will be even better.

And then what you do? You proceed to make it as bad as you can, for all around you, including you.

The abuse you hurl, spoken or implied at those around you, because deep down inside you, you know your life sucks, and you suck.

You should never feel as bad as you do, because you’d think you would find some comfort in something. Work, even if you don’t like it that much, is an accomplishment of a sort. No matter what it is, there is something to it. True, it doesn’t always pay the bills, and that’s no fun, but we’ve all been there.

Well, most of us. Perhaps that is why you turn your eyes to an alleged hero, a big name, a big deal who made it, by whatever means necessary.

There are people to look up to, who did rise out of nothing and make that something of themselves. Instead, however, of taking them on as a role model, and making your own way, you largely just descended into frustration, anger, and guilt.

These are human things, there’s no shame in them. We all have setbacks, but why did you lash out, rant, rave and complain about how you didn’t get yours?

Instead of looking back, and thinking it over, and considering a new course, you dove into whatever made you feel better. You used whatever you could make, find, borrow or steal and created your own little world.

And it’s your world; you know that well. Only certain people are let in, and if they displease you, they are expelled, but only after you chew them up, and prepare to shit them out.

Your coworkers, they are not like you; why are they always a step ahead, it seems? Why do they make more, why do they get more responsibility, more power, more of everything?

For you, what you earn is never enough, because you need to keep up. Keep up with Joneses, the neighbors, your peers. Successful men (but it’s not just them anymore) always had the best of everything, and put off an air of exceptionalism. Bigger is better, in all things.

And of course, you must bow, and genuflect to those Big People, those you openly admire, and secretly wish you were like.

Your day is ruled by what makes you money, to buy the things and keep the things. All the while, you are reminded of how small you are, and that the others are keeping you down.

You are assaulted, and, in sadistic way, you allow yourself to be violated and defiled by the talkers, those bottom-feeding mouthpieces who tell you what you want to hear. That we are the greatest thing ever, and that all else are trash and must be destroyed.

You are reminded that you must always put your trust in a magical being that is not there, and a magical book of fairy tales that you do not question, but whose tenets you disregard and break at every turn. You just have to step into the big, pretty building, or into the little box once or twice a week for a little while (always making sure you’re dressed like a peacock, for the fashion show), and say you’re sorry, not sorry.

There is no time to think about the people around you, only that it’s not your fault that others are suffering. You close your eyes, your hearts, and your souls to any kind of empathy, because that’s not tough, strong, and patriotic.

You believe all the lies, that the bad guys did it, they’re out to get you, they will take everything you own, and you will be seen for what you are: a shallow, soulless, hateful, give it to me now person, who rails against anyone getting anything they might actually need, so long as you get your way, and can pat yourself on the back for being so great.

I have been told it gets easier as you get older, but I don’t think it is so. Not from what I have seen: I see generations my age and older getting angrier, more suspicious, more hateful and vile in their invective.

They hate the generations that followed, instead of doing what the ones before you did. You didn’t always understand one another, but you tried to work together, and leave a little better world for the ones that come after.

But no, you had to have it all, and you had to have it now.

You care nothing for the planet we live on, you don’t care that in a few decades, we might be living in the dystopian nightmare that you read about (if you read at all), watch in the theaters and on TV. You love watching others suffer, hurt, bleed, and die, just so long as you don’t have to.

“I’m not going to be here, so who cares?”

I’ve heard people say that, and there is the rot. You, yes you, blame others, never take responsibility for your words, deeds and your role in this theater of the absurd.

When you die, do you want all your possessions put around you, and then set ablaze, so everyone can know how great a life you had, when you could not take any joy in any of it?

I get it, America.

You just don’t care.

To borrow a phrase, you’ve given the universe the middle finger and proclaimed, “I just don’t give a fuck.”

This is your legacy, America. Again, you have left another generation to clean up the mess, and expect us to clean up the mess you leave when you shit yourself in your final years.

You enabled yourself, and you enabled others to be just like you.

I expect to see how this world ends, and I’m not liking it.

There is something I can do about it, though.

I’m not playing your game. While I cannot change you, or your world, I don’t have to play on your playground.

I am doing what I can to make a difference for those who need it, in the smallest of ways, and not because I want anything for it.

The things I write probably won’t be read by many, because you certainly can’t find the time to do it. But perhaps others will.

Eventually, I will move on and leave you behind, to leave you in the stench of your impenetrable sphere of hate, paranoia, conspiracy and proscribed lies. They all did it to you; I did it to you, and I disrespected you, and I crushed you, because you didn’t get what you deserved...supposedly.

So in closing, America, this is what you have wrought. You have everything you want, and you are catered and pandered to daily by those who also want their percentage, but never will get it, because all of you are bound by greed, and the need to ensure you can demolish all others to make yourself feel better.

Dear America, I get it. You just don’t care.

TG

10/27/19