Dear Politics,
Please stop sucking. You’ve sucked before, but this year it’s pretty bad. And you’ve been screaming a lot lately, so loud that I can’t even hear what you’re saying.
So this past 4th of July weekend, searching for a truer message than you usually yell on TV, I started listening to a broadcast of the Declaration of Independence on the radio. I wanted to get back to this country’s roots. But I turned the radio off after the first sentence.
I’d heard enough.
Because those first words of this country’s founding document said it all. It’s like Thomas Jefferson knew you were going to become a jackhole, Politics, and wanted to give us something to fall back on.
Remember this sentence, Politics? It pretty much birthed you in this country. I heard it with my 2016 ears, worn down from the assault by your ridiculous partisan parties and personalities that get nothing done in a broken system:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
One people. Dissolve the political bands. Under the laws of Nature. A decent respect to the options of mankind.
This isn’t about separation from the monarchy in England anymore. We did that already.
This is about you. So listen, Politics. I think we may need to break up. And it’s not us, it’s you. These borderline-cult bands you’ve bound between us that make us blindly support a party instead of a value, the same ones that encourage us only to listen to the people we agree with, aren’t healthy anymore. It’s time to dissolve the political bands, like Jefferson said.
You’ve created some new bands too, Politics; ties between low expectations, family-crony-infused politics-as-usual, and media-driven noise. The list goes on.
This country is too great for that.
It’s not like I have a cure-all answer. I don’t. But sometimes that step out of the shadows starts with realizing you’re in the dark in the first place. And Politics, you brought us here, but I don’t think you can pull us out.
Hey, where’s your more honest wife? She could probably help. I think her name is America. Can you bring her in here for a second? You can wait outside.
Thanks.
Happy Belated Birthday, America.
Your birthday present from me is Hope. Not the kind that Politics gave you, printed alongside ‘Change’ on campaign posters that fell miserably short of their promise.
You deserve better.
This is the hope that we as a people will rise above the noise, talk to each other, and somehow make you proud of us again.
Because we love you. We fight and bitch and let you down, but there are very few of us who don’t respect your flag in our own quiet ways. At a football game. Or in a parade. Or before a memorial service.
Ok, America, you can let Politics back in.
He just needs to sit in the corner for awhile.