It Only Gets Worse

It is overwhelming.

The anger, the pain, the loss, the destruction, the frustration.

How is this happening? Why is there no end in sight? Washington goes about its day as usual while thousands of people suffer, dying slow and anguished deaths 1,000 miles south of us.

Our people. One Nation under God.

One nation.

What?

It is baffling to watch this all unfold. It turns my stomach, it makes me sob, it confronts us all with the awful realization that everything we learned in school about our country being set up to protect its citizens, with plans in place for disaster and strife, with leaders ready to stand by their people, with a government invested in the best interests of its people - bullshit, all of it.

Every man for himself. Survival of the fittest.

Inevitably, that is the idea that this nation is built on. It is a platitude that has become a painful truth.

We don't give a shit. If you are poor in this country, we would rather not see you. If you are helpless, or sick, or old, or very young, you are at the mercy of whatever the elements hand out. If you are born poor, chances are you'll die poor.

Everyone I speak to is dazed. How are the images that we are seeing our country? How will we ever recover from this?

Why didn't anyone have a plan? Why has the government gotten as far as they have in diverting funds from systems and structures geared towards helping the people of the US to a war that wasn't founded, that wasn't our job to wage, that was initiated under false pretenses.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Sure, give 'em to me, but don't be surprised if I watch them drown.