My Worries

      Have you ever had a moment where you have a lot of things you could do, but nothing seems interesting? I've been struggling with that feeling for a few months now. From what I hear, most of the world is right now. So much is wrong with the world right now that everyone has something they could be worried about. That was technically true before 2016, but the problems the world was facing seemed much farther away. Our cruddy health care system? Not a problem if you could find a job. No free childcare? Only a problem if you wanted to work and raise kids at the same time. Trapped in an oppressive system? Not a problem so long as your bills are paid and food's on the table. 

    But now all these problems are being shoved in our faces, constantly. Worse, everyone in charge is going along pretending that everything is okay, when I think most of us know it isn't. We keep seeing people die. We can't leave the house. We can't do anything fun. All any of us is allowed to do is sit and stew in our misery and loneliness. Unless we're rich of course. Then we're allowed to do anything we want to and nobody can meaningfully punish us. 

    I remember it being a headline in 2016 that a third of the US population thought that we were headed for a civil war, with the point being that it was mostly only the right that thought this was a problem. Recently, I saw the same thing on CNBC. Not long ago, I saw PBS News Hour talking about the potential collapse of the United States. I won't pretend I know what the future holds, I'm not an expert on this, but I don't like this feeling that there's something wrong that we aren't addressing, something that we don't even know is wrong, something that will decide what kind of country we are when this ends. 

    What I'm certain of is that we can't fix this problem by insisting on unity. We aren't the United States anymore, frankly I don't think we ever really were. That's why we put so much focus on patriotism, love for our country is the only thing holding us together. I do think we could live peacefully, if we're careful and work hard on building a society where we are allowed to be who we want to be. But I honestly think that if we want to save our country, we have to let go of the idea that we are, or ever wanted to be, the united states.