My Sweet America

I’d like to say Happy New Year and mean it.

I can’t, for a lot of different reasons, the least of which is that I have more cancer.

The least? Yes, really, that’s the way I feel. Like it’s low priority right now, maybe because I’ll be on a new medication soon that is probably going to work.

Yawn.

Huh?

Here’s what’s really bugging me: The state of our nation, the condition my sweet America is in right now. Yes, I’m taking this recent carnage in Washington, DC, personally. And the destruction caused by COVID19, too. Because me and America have a very intimate relationship, and now that I have a serious illness, there’s always that uncomfortable fact that my time is running out. I want to renew that love and I can’t, because of this devastating virus that so many aren’t taking seriously, and because, well, there’s some scary folks out there!

I am truly appalled at the latest news out of our nation’s capital. I was there years back after a nasty break up. One day, I did a ten mile loop that included many of the finest monuments. Another day, I took in the Capitol and the White House. The beautiful city held me in its noble arms as I sobbed and pined for long hoped-for love lost and took my mind off my many shortcomings. I want it there to go back to, for everyone to enjoy.

My love for America was not born out of flag waving and fist clenching, nor does it manifest itself as such. My relationship with her was nurtured by gripping her asphalt with four tires for thousands of miles, pounding her soil with hiking boots, and reveling in her natural mysteries that are slowly being dismantled. I’m very angry that narrow-minded, brainwashed individuals are carving messages in her sacred trees and believing that violence is the way to get what they want.

I’ve figured something out: these individuals will sacrifice treasured relationships to follow a man that could care less about them and will throw them under a moving bus the first chance he gets.

I’m not someone that seeks conflict. In fact, for the past four years I’ve stifled my opinion around certain friends and family to avoid just that. Four years? That’s a long time to keep quiet! Especially when these same friends and family are free as the proverbial bird to throw their views around whether anyone wants to hear them or not. But me? I have to bristle and keep my mouth shut so as not to incite them.

Well, guess what? I don’t care about that anymore. So here’s what I did.

Recently, I put three such relationships to the test by stating my opinion once. The data that follows from my experiment is not an exaggeration.

Relationship One: Ended in silence so deep that it lasted through my birthday, Christmas, New Years, and the bad news about my health, and is still going strong.

Relationship Two: Ended with “Have a nice life.” (Ironic, ya think?)

Relationship Three: Ended with a conspiracy theory and a claim that the deaths of 350,000 victims of COVID19 would have died of something else anyway.

To be fair, there was a fourth relationship involved that actually stood the test of my wrath. So there are some real human beings out there in nowhere land.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I just don’t know where we go from here. Unite under the new President? I wish we could. But the chance of that has been ruined by a bully that can’t lose or play fair. Some people have to screw things up for everyone if they don’t get their way. I have a lot more hope that I’ll keep winning against cancer than I do that My Sweet America will heal sometime soon.

I came across a perfect quote today, courtesy of Isaac Asimov: “When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”

Nevertheless, I’m dreaming of those four wheels on the payment. My soles in the soil. No mask on my face. And cancer not getting the best of me. That’s enough to ask for already, without hoping that others wake up, pay attention to what they’re doing, and seek a voice of reason instead of the battle cry of a madman.

There’s no pride in destruction, in acting on a lie bigger than any we’ve ever known. The world is watching us fall apart. Some are laughing, some are grimacing. But everyone saw it coming. It was the only end to this monotonous tale of greed, falsehood, and insanity.

Look at what we have become in the past four years, and please, let’s get back to the way we used to be before this nightmare happened. We weren’t perfect but let’s face it, anything is better than THIS.