“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”
~ H. L. Mencken

I am depressed. Not by anything going on in my personal life. No, I am depressed by what I see happening to the country of my birth. I am also embarrassed, ashamed, and angry. I’ve been trying for days now to write a post about how the slippery slope of a few years ago has become something more akin to a fall off a cliff, but I am so saddened, disgusted, and maddened by everything the government of my country does and says these days, I can’t even put it into words … at least not words that are coherent. The saddest thing about it all is I can’t do anything to change the way things are or the way things will be. I’m just me … one average person, sitting in an average house, living an average life. Ranting, protesting, writing letters, voting at every opportunity: none of these things will make one bit of difference. America will continue to drift further and faster into reshaping itself into a country I no longer recognize as my own.

It’s not just the government and its actions that are upsetting me these days either. Everywhere I go, online and off, I hear, read and see such hatred based on race, religion, nationality, socioeconomic class. It sickens me to hear Americans saying things better suited for the mouths of our enemies … those people we accuse of being uncivilized, barbarous, evil. Yet these same Americans see themselves as being the good guys, and so nothing they or their elected officials do can be wrong. I wish they would realize Hitler and his followers thought they were the good guys too. They didn’t sit around in their secret bunkers rubbing their hands together and squealing with glee about how evil they were. They believed they were doing the right thing. The world judged differently then, and it’s to the world we must turn now to determine whether or not we really are the good guys. Our own opinion of ourselves is colored by our personal bias, patriotism and the blindness of nationalism. It is the outside opinions that matter. Currently, I’d say the vote on America’s “goodness” is still out, and we should be making note of that and contemplating why it is world opinion of our country, our government and our actions doesn’t match up with the way we see ourselves.

I’ve written more than I intended. It’s the weekend, and I have mundane life tasks awaiting my attention. I just wanted to say something, because I haven’t been saying much at all lately. Now you know why. All the talking and ranting I could possibly do won’t change the way things are and the way they are headed. All I can do is mutely watch as my country of birth morphs into something I’d feared to imagine it ever being and listen to the harsh cries of those too ignorant or dark-hearted to see it happening before their very eyes.

What’s a girl to do when she doesn’t want to face living in America anymore? She fills her days with art, movies, music and kittens. At least for now, those things still bring me joy.