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Truth, Justice, and the American Way

Or, why won’t they listen to me?

Ramona Grigg
5 min readJun 16, 2021
Photo by Sid Balachandran on Unsplash

I don’t know, I keep telling myself I’m getting too old to go on trying to save the country, but what are you gonna do when you see your kids going wayward? You’re going to try to steer them right. It’s what you do. Especially if it’s what you’ve been trying to do your whole goddamn life.

What a bunch of ingrates!

I’m not saying I’m alone in this. Millions of us are thinking the same thing these days. MILLIONS OF US ARE TRYING TO BE SUPERCITIZENS AND WE’RE FIGHTING A LOSING BATTLE.

I can love my country, warts and all, just as I can love my children and grandchildren unconditionally, without expecting absolute perfection. My problem, and I’m not alone in this, is that I see my country as my household. My neighborhood. Whatever happens to it I take personally because I have a stake in whatever happens here. And because I care about whatever happens here.

Is there such a thing as feeling too much? No. When certain people in my household or my neighborhood are put in harm’s way, or if they act like colossal idiots, putting the rest of us in danger, am I just supposed to do a ‘ho hum’ and pretend it doesn’t involve me? Of course it involves me! I live here!

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