America, I Love You, But You're Freaking Me Out
If "America is great, because America is good," what if it's up to no good?
I don’t like to kick things off with confessions. As a strong proponent of foreplay, I usually try to delay those until the fourth or fifth graf. But lately, every day is a struggle not to hate, and it’s a fight that I fear I’m losing.
Don’t get me wrong, as you could have from the above subhead — the headline was actually lifted from a punk band who I play at the end of this piece. I love America, or at least like her enough that it passes for love. I love her highways and byways. I love her national parks and Ball Park Franks. (Nothing is more American than processed meat tubes.) I love her purple grains of majesty and amber waves of mountains, which I might have backwards — an easy mistake to make when you don’t see color. I love that it’s a place where you can crack the top three podcasts in the nation before flaming out in a crypto scandal — Hawk Tuah Girl — by naming yourself after fellatial onomatopoeia. No wonder our forefathers left their Old World hovels. This truly is the Land of Dreams.
So it’s not America herself that I have a problem with. It’s more a large swath of Americans in the current climate. With them, I have a few bones that need picking……