America, your bar is too low
It doesn’t have to be this way
Look I know that we all have blind spots, it’s just a part of life. We all had just one upbringing which for most people means growing up in one place. I’ve been lucky enough to move countries as an adult which is super fun because you get to compare and contrast the way things are done in multiple places, and really critically think about which place does it better.
There’s things about America which are genuinely incredible, that’s why I moved here! It is the land of opportunity where anything and everything is possible. But unfortunately there’s a set of tradeoffs and you need to take the upside with the downside.
And living in America means you need to accept that on any given day it is highly likely that somewhere in the country an idiot will pull out a gun and kill people. Then every now and then that will take place in a school and children will die. Then there will be about a week of outrage, thoughts and prayers will be tweeted, flags will be raised to half mast, some speeches will go viral and people will demand change but then the noise will go back down and the country will get on with it’s life, until it happens again.
It doesn’t have to be this way. America, your bar is too low.
Hear me out: Maybe that group of dudes that made a set of rules for this land in the 1700’s didn’t fully think through everything? Maybe we’re giving them a little bit too much credit. I don’t think they saw this coming.
And the horrible thing is that it doesn’t stop with guns either, there’s a bunch of things that Americans just consider normal because this is how this country has always been, they normalize shit that the rest of the world wouldn’t stand for.
We shouldn’t just accept that tens of thousands of people are homeless and living on the streets. We shouldn’t have to accept that healthcare is treated like a benefit and not a right. We shouldn’t have to accept that 5 men get to decide what a woman can do with their bodies. We shouldn’t have to accept that people are still dying of covid every single day.
America, you need to raise the bar.
It’s okay to admit you were wrong sometimes. It’s okay to accept help and advice.
Anyways, that’s enough doom and gloom for this week. I’m going to go for a walk.
29th May 2022
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