People unabashedly bash America. Americans, who have lived here all their lives. Like myself born and bred in America.
There was a time when born and bred in America was a good thing as exemplified by the Born in America plaque complete with an Eagle and a Harley Davidson motorcycle that is hanging on the bedroom wall of the California suburban home I grew up in.
People bash America. And I am guilty of doing the same. Having traveled around the country and the world, drawn to culture, color and the third world. Drawn to the overseas, the different, the cities, the light, I have hated America and it's vast nothingness lacking culture and color. And Americans.
But I always come back to the comforts and simple comfortable blissful freedom of America. I always crave the open empty roads of a place I call home. Deserts and dry land. Marsh, mosquitoes and swamps. Mountains, trees, covered in snow, sunny beaches and warm sand, miles and miles and miles of open empty road. Blissful, sunny, warm, dried up, unaware, ignorant, and alone America. Unabashedly America. America stands alone. But there was a time I hated America. And I still do in so many ways. I deplore and despise it's empty souless ways. It's racist presidents and faux democracy. It's pretense and lies. We hate it here and we think there is a better place. We finally have a black president and we're still not happy. We focus on his short comings, and the fact that gay marriage is not legal. But how many of us would get married if it wasn't prescribed by society to begin with. We're backwards and unhappy, we blame America because we have no one else to blame. We blame Bush and his inside jobs. Yes, it's a fucked up corrupt place to be. But it's America. Still. At least we still have our speech.
Unabashedly America. We have poverty on our streets. We're sad and we want to help. We see the poverty of the 3rd world. We're sad and we want to help. We are blessed and fortunate to live in a place where we can help.
Yet, we love to complain. And, guess what in America we complain.
America. A place where we can get in our car and drive. Where a woman, can get in her car and just drive. Stop in the middle of nowhere and take a shower at a truck stop.
The Free Open Road.
I smiled shocked and in awe when a woman told me she would drive from Los Angeles to Colorado and stop at a truck stop to take her shower. An unabashed American woman. Unabashedly American.
Fuck it.
America still exists. And we Americans still exist. We still love and live and dream of a place to be Free. A place of Freedom. We still breathe in the hope of Freedom. And everyday more and more people land in America, step foot across the Southern borders to call this place home, to claim a piece of the Freedom.
I've traveled the world too. All us Americans who so quickly and easily bash the land that we've called home, we've been lucky to call home, that gave us shelter and safety. A place to speak out against the war in the rest of the world. While others are dying. Still, all we can focus on is how we were lied to and how the other people lived and dided. It's not just, no it's not fair, but then again, who said life was fair? We get to write, speak out, talk about how unfair it is to be an American. An unabashed American. And now it's considered so UnAmerican to be proud to be an American.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
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