Crazy Country

In truth, I have a lot to say about a lot of things. There’s an endless list these days though. One thing piled on top of the next. Where would I even start?

The problem is that the facts and the opinions are both exhausted and unchanging. It makes it exhausting to even discuss where you stand anymore. It’s just not that simple, putting all of those frustrations into digestible morsels. And yes, it’s largely an American problem. People want to be anti or pro and the rest of us, whether invested or not, we want to discuss the intricacies.

Yet people don’t want to discuss. They want to state their opinions then slam people for countering them. Use your own posts or platforms to scream into the void, they say. Social media is all at once becoming isolated and anti-discussion. Defeats the purpose, I know, but some people seem to love defying common sense.

Quite frankly, I just do the research, pocket it away and move on to finding some distraction. I wish I could say the distractions are ambitious or motivated or productive, but no, they haven’t been. I’ve simply been taking the edge off of the constant anxiety. I’m dedicated to social distancing and being as respectful (with masks) when it’s not possible, but it’s equally frustrating that there are so many people who aren’t. I don’t want to beat a dead horse with going into that again either, but it just seems like very few people even want to understand or value other people’s lives.

I constantly wish I could find a small window to motivate doing what I enjoy again. Now is the perfect time for it, but I do feel the weight of these issues too strongly and I wish I could be apathetic or escape into creativity or taking better care of myself, but I’ve been almost paralyzed by the unknown.

I’ve never needed perfect control, either of myself or anything or anyone around me. Nevertheless, I’ve never felt so untethered and lost. The presidential candidates for Democrat and Republican are a huge letdown. The government and politics are a huge letdown. American apathy and stubbornness is a huge letdown. Social reform is a whole lot of bullshit.

I might have been ‘live and let live’ at one time, but the definitions for words like freedom have fast become a series of loopholes for the worst human offenses. It doesn’t account for anyone but the assholes who want to live a certain way and think everyone else should too. People who slam the intelligence of others as if they are the intelligent ones are often the most misguided of all.

Stupidity isn’t really the problem, nor is ignorance. Apathy, the inability to treat others with respect and kindness and decency, is the depth of the problem. It’s a willfulness to discount the struggles of every individual. The issue is deeper than race or politics or history or circumstance. It’s the modern inability to build close community, to care about how difficult we make life for other people when we only consider ourselves and our circles. Circles are fast tightening until nothing but blatant narcissism truly remains.

I truly hope this country can learn to embrace virtuous ideals again. We don’t need gods or laws or reform; we need personal accountability. We need a conscience. We need each other, whether we like it or not.