I’m going to say it: I am ashamed to be a US citizen. This doesn’t come easily, because having lived abroad and seen some pretty nasty places in my time, I know there are a lot of great things about this country, and a lot of great people who live here, but lately, I’ve reached the conclusion that the US is a sick and twisted country, in which the bad far outweighs the good.
I can remember first feeling revolted about my country several times. The first was when I realized, at the tender age of 17, what an atrocity the US was committing against the people of Vietnam in my name — the rape and murderous destruction of peasant villages and the napalming of children in the South, and the carpet bombing of North Vietnam (including dikes, schools and hospitals). Later, I was shocked and revolted when I belatedly learned how my country had rounded up native born and naturalized Japanese-Americans and Japanese legal residents into concentration camps during WWII, and how the national government had been complicit in the taking of those vilely incarcerated people’s farms, homes and businesses by conniving white fascists in California.
Photo: ‘Old Glory‘ by Beverly and Pack under the license CC By 2.0