Don’t
freak out.
Whenever
someone says they’re proud to be American, people tend to freak a little. They
think I’m immediately going to be a gun totting, republican backing, abortion
and gay person hating pro-government freak.
I’m
not any of those things.
I’m
intelligent. If you examine our country from an intelligent standpoint, you’ll
probably find a lot of things wrong with it. A ton, actually. Don’t even get me
started about healthcare. Social justice, racism, homophobia, yeah, all present
and alive in my country.
But I
love living here. Sure, freedom is a nice perk (more than nice, I’m being
sardonic) but I love it the way I love my friends and family. Just like with
the people I care about, in the country I care about I dedicate my days to
making myself and it as a whole a better place to live in. That’s all I can do,
is invest my time and pride into this country to make it better.
Think
of America as your first crappy car. Yeah, it belches smoke and the seatbelt in
the back doesn’t work so you can only take two friends to Sonic at a time, but
it runs. And if you dedicate your time and talents to fixing it, making it
better and improving it, you can rebuild it better than it ever was before.
Being
American makes me happy and proud and I’m not ashamed of that. It seems to me
every time something bad happens, we all put our American flags out and stand
together and look all proud of being our country. But as soon as something we
don’t like happens, we start burning those flags, fighting with our neighbors
over court verdicts and trying to strangle each other with our righteous beliefs.
Stop
it.
Either
we’re all in this together or we’re not. If you don’t like it, work to change
it. Fix it. Throwing rocks and hurting people won’t do it. Threatening to shoot
each other, threatening to bomb people, threatening to exact your revenge
against the system in what I’m sure is your vision of poetic justice won’t do
the world any good. It’s harder to fight for what you want than it is to whine
about what you don’t have.
I’m
pro-America (not anti-any other county.) I also respect the military, I’m
pro-government intervention and I even think it’s a good thing that the
government spies on its people because ya’ll be freaking crazy and I’m glad
someone knows about it. (Ever hear of Big Data, it’s kind of awesome.)
Anyway,
I know it sounds uber-patriotic and crap, and maybe it’s because I’ve been
listening to Demi Lovato’s Made in the USA on repeat, but I’m proud of my
country. And I love it here.
Challenge
to my Readers:
Make
it better. Love your neighbor; settle your fights without violence. Look out
for each other. Take care of your health and be proud of yourself.
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