Dear America,

I cannot with you anymore. I am hopeless and hapless, and that was before I learned twenty people were killed with a gun today at an elementary school in Texas. Eighteen of them were children. Last week a white supremacist with a gun murdered ten black people at a grocery store. In the last two years one million people have died from a disease we refuse to do anything about.

What is your fucking problem, America?

You are a country where people will love an object so much, believe so hard in their right to own that object that they’re okay with someone walking into an elementary school and murdering more than a dozen children at once. America how many children are you okay with dying from a gunshot wound so you can continue to own guns? Is there a limit? One seems like way too many children to lose for the right to own a thing.

I know you lost the battle over sensible gun control when 20 first graders were killed with a gun and you did nothing about it.

America, you seem to be big believers in doing nothing.

America, you do not want to be even the tiniest bit inconvenienced to keep anyone safe. You will not vaccinate. You will not wear a mask. You will not provide citizens with healthcare or a living wage or anything that would make their lives better in some small way.

America, why you gotta be so awful all the time? Are you really so afraid that someone might get something more than they deserve that you want everyone to suffer?

America, do you really think personal-responsibility is all that stands between people and a better way of life? From what I can tell for all of history you’ve been hoping people will bootstrap their way out of suffering all while you keep that boot of white, cishet, patriarchal capitalism firmly on their necks.

America, I hate that I live here, in a country where I have a self-soothing ritual to deal with mass murders. Mass shootings happen so often you have to develop a routine or you will crack. I’m so close to cracking, America. I want to crack, but I refuse to let you win. So I recite the problematic poetry and I listen to a Scottish band with sad songs that make me feel less lonely and I type. The only hope I have is that these activities will make me feel a slightly less wretched and helpless.

America, everything is a lot all the time and you do nothing to help.

America, the jig is up. Your underpants are showing. You are an embarrassment. You have failed and continue to fail not only your most vulnerable citizens, but even your most average ones. You only work for companies and the super wealthy. You are farce.

America, what do you have to say for yourself?

Angry and disappointed,
Jodi