What It's Like to Wake Up in America
A reflection on the current state of the American idea
Finance writer Pablo Andreu writes beautifully about what’s happening right now in America.
He articulates clearly what many (including me) are feeling.
I watch with horror as people I knew—or thought I knew—contort themselves into unnatural shapes to justify the state-sanctioned murder, kidnapping, violence and rape of the nation’s people. Friends and former colleagues, who I thought were good people, are suddenly bereft of empathy and riddled with a meme-happy, bloodthirsty schadenfreude masquerading as a sense of justice.
But what if we tell the truth?
It doesn’t matter what I say. The facts and figures I cite have no impact. They have their own set, provided by the lever-pullers who would keep us at each other’s throats forever. Nothing sways them. I’m stumped by their mulishness. I have no choice but to marvel at this feat of social engineering.
So, I mourn. I mourn the country I knew, or rather the country I thought I knew. I mourn the people I knew, or rather the people I thought I knew. I suppose, really, I mourn the old version of me who believed those things. Or maybe it isn’t mourning at all. Maybe this is what an awakening feels like. It shouldn’t surprise me that it would be uncomfortable. No one likes waking up, after all. That’s why we’re in this mess to begin with.