America. It’s kind of a weird word, right? AMERICA. It’s a country, two continents, a dream. My parents have always maintained that it is the greatest country on Earth. For some people, it absolutely is. For most of us, it isn’t. My grandparents tell me it is the only thing standing between humanity and total domination at the hands of some veiled threat. Until recently, it seemed to be working okay, if not great, for most people. You could get a job, go to work, save your money, buy a house, start a family, and on and on it went for two hundred years.

I’m 30. This place has been a mess my entire life.

9/11 went down when I was 6, so, frankly, I wasn’t really interested in taking a break from Spongebob or Pokemon to lock in and focus on the impact of the new global war on terror. But I grew up in the shadow of those towers. The PATRIOT act was passed when I was in first grade, I never knew an America without Big Brother looking over my shoulder. We killed half a million civilians in Iraq while I played Yu-Gi-Oh with my buddies in elementary school. I know people that fought there, all they seemed to get for their efforts was PTSD and cancer. Same old story.

In 2008 the Great Recession hit. That one I remember. We de-regulated the banks and to the surprise of absolutely no-one with a hint of historical hindsight, they immediately caused a major problem that everyone else had to clean up.

Too big to fail, thanks for the bailout, see you guys again in 20 years!

How many people do you think killed themselves because of that? A quick Google search tells me that the excess deaths from suicide between 2008 and 2010 number around 5,000. Are all of those deaths directly attributable to the greed of the banks and investment firms on Wall Street? They are to me.

2008 through 2016 were my middle school and high school years. Not formative at all. My main takeaways from the Obama administration were:

1. People will promise you anything to get elected.
2. Once elected, those people have zero reason to deliver.

In 2016, we completed our descent into political tribalism that began decades earlier with Reagan. Owning the libs was worth anything, even destroying our democracy.

In 2020 we were hit with COVID, the George Floyd Protests/Riots, and the election of Joseph Biden. I don’t feel a need to elaborate on those right now.

Now, in 2025 I can look back at the last 30 years and say with certainty that the America my parents knew, their parents knew, and their parents knew, is gone. We are living in Rome, and 476 is rapidly approaching. I have no hope for the future, I have no faith in our institutions, I have no doubt that the people in charge are doing everything they can to make my life and the life of all of my family and friends as miserable as possible.