America, 2017.

 

They came to Charlottesville, VA, with tiki torches, Trump costumes, and hate in their hearts.

 

Stealing valor.

 

Cosplaying patriotism.

 

Waving Confederate and Nazi flags, like those bits of cheap cloth don’t signify the losing side in every fight.

 

This is America. This *is* us. Here is the man who is our current president. He blamed “both sides”; like white supremacists marching through a deserted college campus yelling “Jew will not replace us!” is the same as black people demonstrating to please have cops stop shooting their children in the street.

 

It always has been like this.

 

It doesn’t have to be like this forever, though. It can be fixed right the fuck now. We can choose to live our truths and start being honest about how this country has been ran for its entire history. We can work to understand each other better and build policy that supports all of us based on the overarching ideals that hold us together. We all want future generations to be better off than we are. We want to be healthy and happy. We hope to not have to struggle for the basics of existence, and instead to have the freedom to explore everything, from the depths of our souls to the tops of the mountain peaks our country seems to have an endless supply of. These are not things that should be limited to those who have the right skin color and the right parts in their pants and can afford it.

There is enough of everything for all of us. We’re The USA, damnit. “Equal rights for others does not mean less rights for you. It’s not pie.” The only lines between each other that we require are the ones between hope and fear, between love and hate, between freedom and fascism. Everything else is arbitrary.