Grieving the loss of the U.S.

I'm usually an optimist...but less so today. I'm grieving the loss of the U.S.

I feel like I'm approaching the "acceptance" stage of grief. I have been in denial and I have bargained with the gods of justice and sanity, but I'm seriously close (at least today) to just throwing up my hands and saying, "It is what it is."

White supremacists are no longer the crazy uncle or the evil neighbor or the fictional movie character...they are now running the show. Homophobia has practically become a religion. We have declared war on the poor, the sick, and on the planet. We act as if science is just one more opinion that we can take or leave. Transgender people serving their country with honor are summarily dismissed on a whim. Families can be ripped apart if they are brown, religions can be vilified if their Prophet is from Mecca rather than Nazareth, someone who applied for multiple draft deferments feels entitled to insult war heroes, couragious people who claim their right to peaceful protest have their patriotism questioned, a constitutional scholar can become president and have his faith and citizenship questioned and be replaced by the very person who so ridiculously questioned them! Someone can brag about groping women without their consent and that doesn't hurt his political ambitions, we are closer to nuclear war since anytime since the Bay of Pigs, Nazis are said to include "good people" while athletes of color protesting white supremacy are called "sons of bitches" by the most powerful person in the world - who, btw, is the same person associating with and defending Nazis! If this is really who we are, then we deserve the comeuppance which is surely at hand.

It's too much. It's too depressing. It's too sad. It's too frightening. It's too disgusting. And I'm too weary. This dystopian time will not last forever and sanity will return, but the US will never again be what it was nor what it once perported to strive to become. We will join the burning rubbish heap of history where fallen empires wind up. Our borders will be secure and we will have an economy and education and families...we aren't going away, but the shining city on a hill myth is being ripped from us (and perhaps it was arrogant to hold onto it in the first place).

I'll probably return to denial and bargaining. I hope I do. I pray for such a resurrection of hope and determination. But right now, I'm afraid it's over for us, for the US. I'm afraid that I'm dangerously close to accepting the seemingly inevitable. The angels will defeat the beast (according to the Christian apocalyptic myth), but the angels seem to be getting a pretty severe ass whipping for the time being. And that makes me very sad. God helps us.