We Won’t Stop You (Secdee 2021)
We started hearing it the day after Barack Obama’s election and now the foot-stomping tantrum chorus of entitled bullies threatening to take their ball and go home if the rest of us don’t agree to play by their rules is growing again.
“This is not my America” you lament! “This is no longer the same country I know and love!”
Huh. You know what- you may be right.
Because frankly, if you demand that America in the 21st century should function under the same assumptions and with the same values and the same entitled majority that America did in the 18th century- then no, this actually isn’t your America any more.
If you believe that “Freedom of religion” means that you have the right, based on your religious beliefs, to make decisions about health care, family planning, equal rights, employment and education for people who do not even share your religion- you’re in the wrong place.
If you think you have the right to say who other people can love, this isn’t that place.
If you believe that bullying and abuse is ok as long as you do it for Jesus, and that kids are better off in orphanages than with gay parents, that its OK for you to demand to inspect our daughters’ genitals before you let them use the bathroom but it’s “radical” for us to tell you to wear a mask to save lives and that rape shouldn’t be an ‘excuse’ for an abortion because hey, some girls rape easy… this is not your America.
If you believe that the working poor, pensioners and veterans in America just want ‘free stuff’ but when billionaires demand bigger income tax cuts its just for the good of the nation- no, this is not your America.
If you believe that it was wrong for your Irish and Polish immigrant grandparents to be called ‘dirty’ and ‘lazy’and ‘stupid’ 100 years ago but its ok to assume that Latino immigrants are all criminals carrying diseases, or that middle eastern immigrants are all terrorists (while you strut around the grocery store with a gun strapped to your back)… I don’t think so.
If you think that the reason there are so many single parent families today is a lack of shame attached to the mothers, and that the proper way to encourage better attendance at school is to take away the food stamps from the families of kids who miss school… you don’t understand what that “beacon of hope” thing is supposed to mean.
If the idea of massive walls and internment camps for people who are different seems like a good thing- but a gun license or a vaccination for you is government oppression… you probably would be happier somewhere else.
If you think that it is communism for a government that calls itself “By the people and For the people” to help take care OF the people and that “promote the general welfare” shouldn’t include making sure citizens don’t die from treatable illness just because they can’t afford health insurance, you may have taken a wrong turn.
If you believe that black people only vote for a black man because of race but white people never vote for a white guy just because of his race… if you defend the monuments of men who took up arms and committed slaughter to tear this country apart as your “heritage” but outlaw teaching the heritage of the people held in chains… if you believe that a 90 year old veteran who has been voting for 50 years should be denied a ballot because he no longer has a driver’s license… then it’s really not your America any more.
If you believe that having your candidate criticized is a witch-hunt but it’s ok for you to call the other candidate a pedophile and the Antichrist then yeah, you may be in the wrong place.
If you think that a nation which you boast is the Leader of the Free World and The Greatest Nation on Earth should ignore the needs of the rest of the earth, and even the needs to its own people, the you don’t understand the meaning of leadershipn.
And if you believe that it’s not possible for your candidate to lose an election unless the “urban” people cheat… by voting… if you believe that an acceptable way to win is to try to stop as many of those people as possible from voting: that “bipartisan’ means that all those other people must do things your way even when you are in the minority and that the “United” part of “United States of America” only applies when your party is running the show… then you fundamentally don’t understand what America- what a democratic republic- is.
Our Founding Fathers did not create a nation where groups of citizens can just ‘opt out’ when things aren’t being done their way, or where a bunch of you whining that you want to leave will make us turn our backs on our core principles in order to appease and accommodate you.
It’s not a place where beginning a sentence with “I’m not a racist but’ makes it ok to say that an unarmed black man deserves to be shot down in the street because he looked ‘suspicious’ or to design voting laws targeted specifically at communities of color. It’s not a country where rich, privileged old men can attack a young woman’s character in vicious and almost pornographic ways simply because they disagree with her politics- and not suffer consequences.
Where the entitled heaping abuse on the oppressed is just free speech, but dissenters criticizing them for it is cancel culture and communism.
It’s not a place where we believe that a helping hand in the middle of a disaster should come with a price tag or require the surrendering of rights, or that hungry children in a land of plenty should hunt through dumpsters for food because if they ask for bread, they’re lazy.
America is not a nation where we think it’s ok for poor people to die from treatable diseases because millionaire CEO’s don’t want to slightly reduce their profits. It’s not a nation with an endless tolerance for those who disdain science and reason and basic human decency, or those that decry ‘government ‘freeloading’ by other people when their own hands are in the cookie jar up to the elbows.
And, thankfully, it’s not a nation where bitter, abusive, obscenely wealthy men can evade any and all punishment for the crimes they commit- including allowing the death of a half-million people for profit.
Not yet.
And now you say that if we tell you to follow public health laws, or get a gun license, or to let people vote by mail, or tax the billionaires to fix our roads, you’re going to leave.
If the army makes me get vaccinated against Covid, I’ll quit!
If congress makes it easier for all citizens to vote, we’ll secede!
That’s awfully hypocritical coming from the same people who call us unpatriotic and yell “America- love it or leave it!” every time we try to update antiquated laws to simply fix the things that are broken so the system works for all people more equally. When we are dissatisfied with the status quo, you accuse us of hating America.
Then you wave your confederate and Nazi flags and tell us to move to Russia if we don’t love America with you in charge.
Now it seems like you don’t love America enough to stick around and work together.
That’s too bad.
Look, we’re not trying to run you out, but you are certainly free to go. I don’t think many of you have actually thought this out from an economic, educational or military perspective, but critical thinking doesn’t seem to be your strong suit anyway.
So pack your stuff, if you must.
Uh, no- you don’t get to take your state with you. Sorry, but that ‘Constitution’ thing you’re always going on about says these states stay together. We fought a war to prove that point.
And you don’t get to keep our flag: that belongs to America, along with the 50 states. You’ll have to pick another to hit people with- but that shouldn’t be hard. You seem to like this one better anyway.
But hey, you can leave, if that’s really what you want: if your entitlement runs so deep that you’d actually rather abandon this ship than continue on the voyage with people who don’t always agree with you. I’m not sure who will want you, but good luck to you.
The border is that-a-way.
Tracy Meisky is a poet, writer, singer, songwriter and all-around boat rocker from way back. Feel free to look around, but if you break it, you bought it.