I just want to get back to arguing about the primary. We were more naive and simplistic then.
Today, I’m ashamed for my country. For a while I’ve been ashamed for my country.
As a white, straight man, I’m embarrassed. I don’t have to worry about being shot because of who I am. I don’t have to be afraid that my own government is out to get me. I can live my life in relative peace.
Except I know that we are, as a nation, worse off when we ignore the systemic hatred embedded into the soul of our culture.
I have finally come to the realization that our elections are not about our candidates. The elections are about us, and what kind of country we want to have. I’ve always sort of understood that. Today, it smacks me in the face.
I’m at a loss. I don’t know what I can do. I don’t even know what we can do together.
I wish the United States could realize our ideals so we could argue with pettiness like we did in the primaries. I wish we could have epic battles about whose universal health care plan is best or whose college affordability plan will work the best. I wish we could be that simplistic. Our country is more broken than that.
Hatred begets violence which begets hatred which begets violence, until we are all dead. If not physically, then spiritually.
If we don’t come together, our little experiment in self-government is doomed.
Someone, please, help me understand what happen to us. Help me know how to fix it. I just don’t know anymore.
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” — Dr. Martin Luther King