Dad?
Also.....man, do I feel this post. I am a patriot. I always have been. I'm a big believer in "what can be." Or, at least I used to be. Today? Every chance we get to choose the wrong fork in the road....that's what we choose. What would a shitheel country do? Then that's what we'll do.\
And it's not our government. We're getting the government that a sizable chunk of "we the people" want. The problem with America is Americans.
Yet...I still can't quit it. Bozo and I talked about this at the time, but a few years ago at an Austin FC match, Gina Chavez sang the national anthem. And she fucking SANG it. A hispanic, queer woman - this country and its leadership fucking HATE her. She has every reason to hate it back. But she didn't. She fucking embraced it. She declared with her voice that the anthem, the flag, this nation, belonged to her too. It is ours, too. In the last year or so, we've flown our flag on American holidays because fuck those fuckers who think they own it, and then use it as a shroud to wrap themselves in as they do utterly un-American shit.
But will I stay here, long-term? I don't know. My daughter won't be coming back. Odds are 90% or better she'll make her life in Germany or the UK, based on her current grad school direction. My son, on the other hand....he lives overseas. He goes to school overseas. But he wants to save the world. And he wants to come back and save this country. I'm pretty sure he wants to come back and fight. With his life, if he has to. I've told him this country isn't worth his life, but I don't think he agrees with me. And I respect that. I'm pretty sure I felt that way too when I was 22.
Are there enough people like him to make a difference? I don't know. And it makes me sad that at my age, I probably won't be alive to find out if it really did make a difference (I think we're a good 30-40 years from seeing if we can recover....because we've still got many years of "getting worse" to go).
It makes me sad. It makes me so fucking angry. Because I love this country, and what it was becoming....a little bit better, bit by bit, every day. We made progress forward measured in inches (but it WAS forward). Now....we are lurching back miles, and miles, and miles. What takes generations to build can be destroyed in, literally, days.
How can I feel proud of this country? I can't. Not right now. But I'm proud of my son. That's what I can muster, for now.