I'm Sorry, America

You’re making bad choices, my peeps. I’ve seen it before. Running away from home. Sleeping through classes. Depressed. Trying a little weed. Maybe something stronger. Living on the street. Paranoid. Angry. Self-righteous. Delusional.

And those were just family members.

Now the sickness has spread to the point that we have elected our drug dealer, our enabler, our pimp, as President.

Every time someone close to me starts making terrible choices, I try to steer them in a better direction. It never seems to work. Sometimes they get better and say that I should keep trying, that those voices of encouragement stay in their heads, even though it may not seem like it, that they hear those voices even as they make more bad choices.

They also tell me that there is basically nothing I can do. That they have to figure it out themselves. That change has to come from within them. I usually keep trying. I do it for me as much as for them. It’s hard to stand by and do nothing while someone destroys his life.

Sometimes they change, many times not. When they do change, it is usually long after I have given up. Not on them, exactly, but on convincing them. They change because they convince themselves. They hit bottom, as they like to say. Sometimes hitting bottom kills them, but sometimes it is the painful catalyst for rebirth.

And so it is with my country now. We are making bad choices. It started with the Tea Party. I thought we went to rehab for that, but it seems we have relapsed.

At each mile on the road, I have talked myself blue. If my voice is being heard at all, it’s not influencing behavior. I’m talked out now.

Like any addict, we have excuses and rationalizations for our bad choices. Blame the enablers. Blame the technocrats, the bureaucratic overlords. Blame the snobby elites. The drug dealer is the only one who understands us.

I would blame myself, but I reserve that special hell for bad things that happen to my children. I don’t feel responsible for the bad choices we are making now. Over and over, I’ve warned that we should not do what we are doing. Now I guess I’m going to have to do what I inevitably end up doing when someone I love goes down this rabbit hole despite everything I’ve tried to prevent it: cross my fingers and hope they figure it out before they do too much permanent damage.