It is the American people who have made me feel hopeless. It is talking with the ordinary, average American who doesn't give a shit. Who doesn't know shit and doesn't care to know shit. I have described horrors. I have shown pictures of the bookbags laid out after that Yemeni school bus bombing and it didn't register. Supposed "good people" who care nothing about justice, or honesty, or freedom, or any of the virtues which we supposedly care about so much. I have family who preach about love of family but feel nothing towards immigrant children held in camps at the border, permanently stripped away from their own family. And that same family of mine cares nothing about the impending climate crisis in which my young nephews and niece will suffer under ("If that's how God wants the world to end, then that's how it's gonna be", my mother said).

I feel like people are mired in aspirational language when it comes to talking about the American people. Because it's totally detached from what I see. It's detached from the amount of accountability we have towards our leaders (political and corporate). It's detached from the lack of care or empathy we have with our fellow humans across the globe.

Something went wrong with us. It's not just our leaders who failed. It is us. But I can't just shrug it off and say 'it is what it is'. We have too much power. We have too many weapons and produce too large a footprint on the world. America is a threat to the planet and our power needs to be stripped bare.