There are many things I do not know. The details of many professions escape me. I cannot perform surgery. You wouldn’t want me representing you in court or congress or in a sales negotiation. I would not strap on the back of a bucking bull or attempt to drive semi-truck. I don’t know anything about exploring space or playing golf. Plumbing and electricity are a foreign language, but there are some things I know. I know how to organize problems and read data in order to get shit fixed, and how empathy works on a large scale because of my professional career. I understand what life is like when you can’t count on the government for things because of my childhood on a fairly isolated cattle ranch. I also understand narcissists because I’ve enabled them before.

Oh. Another thing I understand – both sides of the political spectrum. I’m a liberal that grew out of conservative soil. My first vote was for GW. My second was for a libertarian. The third and fourth were for Obama. I am fifth generation in a red state and stay because if all of us bail, it never improves. I interact with conservatives all the time, because…surrounded. It’s just a thing. I am a redneck girl hiding in the suburbs, with too many ideas about how good things could be, and too many feelings about the injustice of everyfuckingthing.

We need to talk now simply as Americans, because both sides of establishment politics are being an embarrassment to democracy and have been for years.

Yes, insurance is a bullshit racket that we’ve given WAY too much power and it sucks when people can’t afford their premiums or their meds. Families futures should not be on the line because of a medical diagnosis. It is bad when some guy in a green pickup comes and tells you that your cows can’t eat on this piece of land that your family has been grazing for a century anymore, or that you can’t ride a quad to your favorite hunting spot because of road-less rules. Who the fuck do they think they are? When the list for kid’s school supplies comes to a few hundred dollars and then the district is still cutting extracurriculars and suddenly you have to pay for more babysitter time and where, exactly, is all this money supposed to come from? Don’t we pay taxes for this? Why is getting arrested like playing the lottery, why do people get stuck owing money and time and fines and end up stuck in the system? Why is the news so unbelievable? Who can we trust?

It’s the same damn problems for everyone, and the blowing shit up contingent of our neighbors saw those issues and did what they do best – blew shit up. So, we have Trump. Gotta admit at least that he is scaring the hell out of minorities, but lots of people believe that the snowflakes need to toughen up anyway – the borders, the military, trade agreements all “need” made into the best and strongest – we’re heading into an era where manliness and power will be prized above all else and success reflects character, not petty bullshit like actions.

I can’t tell you that’s not the America I know. That’s exactly the America I know. Piousness, money, power, authority, profit, and nepotism are the only metrics that count. The good ol’ boys network is going to flourish. Either Jesus shows up, the right people gain more wealth, or we die. None of those things are the problem of those whose life goal is to magnify short-term profits “for the shareholders.” Draining the swamp means gaining efficiency. Appealing, right? Except we’ve played into the hands of the Bobs from Hell.

The issue comes once we look and realize that the swamp isn’t being drained by a bunch of people with the best interests of the country and it’s future in mind. People currently holding office most likely will not in 2018 and 2020 if we even get to keep voting. Federal employees will be terminated if their bosses are not good enough at the politics game and we have even more unemployment and unrest. Public lands will be sold for funding and hunting ground won’t exist without a lot more money. Traditional jobs aren’t “coming back.” Service jobs are coming for the rest of the country, who hasn’t already succumbed. There won’t be a middle class and a lower class, just plebes and the ones with money. A lot of kids who are enjoying their last years of high school? They’re probably going to war. If the draft is enacted, girls are going too. Our daughters, going to war, all to protect the ego of a man. It doesn’t even matter who that man is, even though I, personally, find Trump distasteful as fuck. That’s not okay.

You know that person who you give an inch and they take a mile? Who looks at a law, a rule, a process, a procedure, and figures out a workaround to get his way and stay out of shit, all while getting others in trouble? That’s the White House. Now we gotta deal with it.

We gotta remember that truth exists and Americans have much more in common than not. In the coming times, when things might get a bit lean and scary, that those families we build through shared experience and community are going to become more important than ever. Republicans, democrats, liberals, libertarians, people who don’t give a fuck, people who give far too many fucks – we’re all in this thing together. We are America. Not politicians. Not government. Not the flag. Not state media and Hollywood. It’s us. It’s always been us.