That proclamation and the desire to write this letter came to me weeks ago. Since then, I've started it countless times. While my sincerity in that assertion has never wavered, the ground beneath your feet (and as a matter of course, mine) is shifting so rapidly, the words would feel stale as soon as I'd type them. I'd blink at the screen, brows knitted as the familiar feeling of that's not quite right welled inside me.
America*, I've been lumbering around your patch of dirt for nearly six decades. In some ways, it's been like watching a movie. Sometimes it's a good movie, sometimes it's not so good. Its details have given me pause, disgusted me, and delighted me. Despite the unevenness, the movie of America—your movie—always had heart. So far from flawless, but thrumming with that unmistakable heart.
Then it was almost as if the production team started to fade. Maybe the lighting felt off. Sets weren't all that convincing anymore. Pretty soon the writing went south along with the chemistry between the actors. It all happened right before my eyes, before everyone's eyes.
My brand, America, is based on credibility. I've built it by telling the truth. I edit these musings again and again with surgical precision (and still overlook the simplest errors). I research until my eyeballs bleed (well, they don't really bleed, but you get the picture), because when you've put a great deal of sincerity and effort into a message, people don't just "know you care,” they feel it in their bones. Work at it long and hard and your peeps will overlook the one bad line and forgive honest mistakes.
Until they won’t—and baby, you’re getting precipitously close to the edge.
Swirling amid the unavoidable and flashier headlines, America, is a pretty good indicator of how far your credibility has tanked. However boring, it’s also quantifiable: The money guys downgraded you.
“We do feel like governance has deteriorated steadily over the last 20 years,” said the top money guy behind the decision.
The figurative miles between my home (you) and the likes of the violence erupting in Haiti or Niger have always felt infinite. It’s so easy to watch the unsettling images from far away lands and think that could never happen here! Not amid the purple mountain majesty!
Um …
Behold the results of abandoning of some of your quietest and most essential creeds, the ones bespectacled scholars harp about on Sunday morning news shows, the ones that are downright quaint viewed through a 2023 lens:
Politics end at the water's edge.
Embody the loyal opposition.
Conduct a peaceful transition of power.
To be sure, you are a big place filled with a rainbow of people, most of which have bumbled along well enough despite humanity’s endless trials. But now, your denizens are starting to hate each other.
You’ll remember, America, that nasty Civil War business. Indignant apologists will gas on about how the war was about “states’ rights,” but it was really because some people thought it was okay to own other people.
Today, some of your residents are shamefully dancing around the same issue. And if that one doesn’t resonate, they’ll try to convince us to turn against one another because of who the neighbor’s kid loves or how a performer dresses.
To be honest, America, I can barely keep up with those Outrage Machine guys, but you really oughtta eighty-six ‘em because baby, they’re using you. They hold you up like an enormous shield from which the word PATRIOTISM blazes. They’re trying to hide obvious things like their own cowardice, and distracting us against more dangerous things, like their true intentions.
Be careful. I do not want to write your obituary.
I wish this letter was filled with answers. It’s not, but I’ve got one: if one of your red peeps hates a blue peep or vice versa, both of them need to learn how to say, you’re really pissing me off mother effer, but here, shake my hand just the same. The only way out of this mess is to find it together. I’m sure as hell trying.
In the meantime, I shall continue to walk beneath your spacious skies and amid your amber waves of grain.
Love, Erin
*Apologies to Bernie Mac.
Have, yet again, captured exactly how I’ve been feeling! Look forward to your posts! 💜
Pretty much captures the way I feel as well.