Good morning. I need to really mind the courtesies this morning because I’m going to be talking about rage and the reasons for it. Being courteous helps stop me from giving into what is becoming a white hot inferno.
I mean, I spend enough time in that fire anyway. Each new Trump atrocity rolling across my screen and the blind support for it by the GOP, support “No matter what”, stokes that fire- daily. Sometimes hourly.
So I’ve been asking myself, why am I so angry. I’m not just angry, that word alone just doesn’t get it done. I’m deeply disgusted by the things these people espouse and do. I detest what they find good and wholesome. I am their antithetical opposite. And I do mean oppose.
In trying to figure this out, why I rage at rats being rats, my mind flashes back to the things in my past that have shaped me. I remember the colonel in Germany who pulled all of us, his command, into the theater to remind each and every one of us to be a role model as we walked about a foreign nation. “We’re Americans, we tend to swagger, but you’re representing all of our people when you’re out there and you’d better make sure you do it well soldier. Or I’ll have your hide” That was important to him and all of the command. It was important to our people. It was expected of us, by US, as Americans. Don’t be the ugly American. Now we see there were people who really wanted to be the Ugly American. That makes them feel powerful or something.
That colonel also reminded us that we were in a “Pre-war readiness posture” and that those people we needed to treat honorably, be respectful to, were our allies in case Russia came to take all of Europe. It was a real worry then. I think it should still be real now.
I think I’m so angry because these people are pissing on my vision of what America can and should be. I’m also really incensed that they’ve proven the hypocrisy I’ve always accused them of. It’s like they’re suddenly tired of playing the old game of saying one thing to the public while they did a different thing behind closed doors- all while admonishing all and sundry to be true to God and Country.
No, with Trump, all the masks are off. They’re giving the rest of the nation the finger, telling all those who don’t find racism and blatant criminality, sexism and all the other shit they do proper and good to fuck off. They’re telling us they’re just going to take what they want now, and the rest of us will damn well swallow it.
And that really angers me. Writing that has my hands shaking and I feel those fires of anger rising up. That’s part of it. In my America, nobody does that to me or anyone else without getting slapped down. We have laws, we the people demand those laws be applied to everybody. Equally.
The Americans I always knew we were would stand up and put these loudmouths in their place.
I’m angry because I don’t WANT an America where money wins, the promise of America was that money or religion was prime everywhere in the world, but not in America. Here, why, freedom and the right of each individual to be equal to every other individual would be our anchor. The principal that defines us. Sure, we used capitalism to get there, but capitalism was never the promise, the promise was equality and capitalism cannot deliver on that one. Capitalism gives you a class society and people who want to be in the “Better” class. All they need is money, no matter HOW they get it.
I’m angry because you see real depictions of honor and American grit all through our history and now, wow, it only took forty years of the prosperity gospel and twenty years of criminal and treasonous minded people to fill the ranks of the GOP and- here we are. It’s like they make all of our history suspect and prove that all we said we were was a lie. That has me outraged. I could bite nails and spit out tacks I’m so angry with these people.
I’m DAMNED outraged that nearly forty percent of my people want a nation where grift is good, where race is a determining factor, a place where their daughters are seen as prey for any man who takes an interest in them and an employer has absolute power over their employee’s lives. That there are so many who embrace the blatant “me, me, me” politics and ideology disgusts me. So many willing to worship hate- it makes me sad and yeah, anger is always fear showing itself.
What if my vision were always wrong? What if they are right and I’m stupidly naive? What if they grow, what if they win? I just don’t know how I’d deal with that. My deepest sense is that this is our “Moment” the kind of Evil that spawns much Great Good “Moment”. That’s my feeling but that doesn’t stop me from being damned angry.
There is this sense of How Could YOU? Yes, I feel betrayed and not only by those people who are sucking up to Russia for personal gain. Let us be clear, Trumpism is one thing, it’s the same thing as the prosperity gospel. It’s greed in sheep’s clothing.
Me! Take care of ME. Get yours first. That’s the whole of it, there is no room for two sided loyalty or helping those less fortunate- even GOD is supposed to be all about them. He’s only supposed to reward those who reward themselves and while I’m not Christian- that is NOT what their Christ preached and that is NOT America.
We were ALWAYS the nation that helped. Now we’re supposed to only help some- and charge for it if we do help them. Money, money, money! That’s another part that really angers me.
I’m angry because people associate those self centered, short sighted, hateful, racist assholes with me because we were born on the same piece of land. And I’m determined.
I’m determined that they are NOT going to win. They are the aberration, not me. I’m not the abnormality, no matter how much they try to portray me and those like me as such. Me- with my empathy for other’s pain, my desire to see every person stand up and live a life of dreams that THEY dream and my willingness to share what I have. They aren’t going to change that. I can’t become them, America CANNOT become what they want her to be. They will have to change, they have to be stopped, and yes, they have to be disciplined.
Criminals both foreign and domestic. The world is getting smaller and America needs to regain her place as The World’s Good Actor.
Then I can drop a lot of this anger.
Have a great Saturday!
Kelly
Originally posted on Kell's World.