Isn't it sad?
Isn't it sad where this country has found itself in the last year?
Isn't it?

Isn't it aggravating?
Isn't it aggravating that in 2016
we have people taking the streets
protesting
Neo-Nazis?
That in 2016 fascist ideas are still finding mainstream media coverage?
How is it,
that after all those lessons in middle school and early high school,
about how horrendously Jews were treated during World War II,
after watching The Devil's Arithmetic
and reading The Diary of Anne Frank
and just reading about Adolf Hitler's ideology
that there are actual people who think that eugenics is ethical?
Isn't it aggravating?
Isn't it?

Isn't it sickening?
Isn't it sickening that black men and women are still being treated sub-human?
Isn't it sickening that after what was dubbed as the "Civil Rights Movement"
we have a hashtag circulating called "Black Lives Matter?"
Now I understand,
that this country has its history.
I understand,
that white Americans have treated people of color poorly in the past.
But how is it,
that after Martin Luther King Jr.
and Malcolm X
and the Black Panthers
and the Freedom Riders
and Rosa Parks
police brutality and blatant racism was still in existence into the next two decades?
And how is it,
that after these issues were brought to light in mainstream media,
police brutality and blatant racism is still in existence today?
Isn't it sickening?
Isn't it?

Isn't it appalling?
Isn't it appalling that after two-hundred and forty years of this country being a sovereign state
we are still trying to take land from the indigenous people?
As if they weren't here before America was even America?
As if they don't have the right to their own land?
That while we were feasting on turkey and mashed potatoes and a vast array of casseroles in celebration of taking land away from the natives
they were trying to protect their land in Standing Rock
and being harrassed with water cannons?
Isn't it appalling?
Isn't it?

Now I'm not trying to sound unpatriotic.
I'm not trying to put down the very country I was born and raised in.
I am proud of my American citizenship.
But we can do better than this.
We can be better citizens towards one another.
We can let people live their lives the way they want to live them
so long as no one is getting hurt.
We think and feel and live with compassion for others,
not trying make anyone feel less of a human;
like they have no place here;
like they have to live a life where they are looking over their shoulder.
We must work together so we are no longer sad
or aggravating
or sickening
or appalling.
So we can say
"Isn't it great to be in America?
Isn't it?"