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Sad Times in the USA
I am sad.
I am so very sad and my heart hurts in ways that I can barely express.
I remember when I believed that my country was a good place. When I accepted the idea that the American experiment in democracy was a light to guide the world. My father served in World War II, and talked about our country’s mission to free the people who had been tortured and enslaved in Germany. As the son of Italian immigrants, he felt that it was his duty to push back against the fascist takeover of Italy under Mussolini.
My father and his brothers, first-generation Americans, fought to preserve the American ideal. They believed in this country. They believed that its leaders were good people who meant to do good things.
As I was growing up, I experienced the tensions and traumas of the Vietnam War. I attended my first protest marches as a young teen, demanding that our government stop sending our brothers and friends off to die for a cause that we struggled to understand. I was a part of many family arguments over the war and the peace movement and the direction in which the country was going.
But through all of that, all of it, I held onto my belief that life in the USA was as good as, or better than, life anywhere else on this blue planet.
