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For the love of God and all that’s good and beautiful, haven’t you had enough, America?

Enough book bans,
culture wars,
bathroom bills,
family separations,
poisoned food,
renamed lakes,
unrelenting surveillance,
tax-funded genocides,
and wars of choice,

Haven’t you had enough of terrorized refugees,
billionaire techbros,
hospital room ICE raids,
protected predators,
ignored lynchings,
kleptocratic malpractice,
legislated religion,
and of being helmed by a lecherous, drug-addled, vile, barely literate serial predator and career criminal?

Haven’t you had enough of brutal assaults on the rights of women,
on immigrants,
on transgender teens,
on unarmed black men,
on affordable healthcare,
on free speech,
on our Military?

Have you had enough of relentless attacks on the poor,
on the disabled,
on the environment,
on peaceful protestors,
on the electoral process,
on the US Postal Service,
on objective truth,
on diversity as an idea?

Haven’t you had enough nonsensical conspiracies,
denials of Science,
mockery of expertise,
ignored climate change,
silencing of doctors,
stoked racism,
polluted courts?

Haven’t you had enough cruelty,
enough bigotry,
enough criminality,
enough divisiveness,
enough malevolence,
enough hatred,
enough ugliness?

Haven’t you had enough needless suffering,
enough unnecessary death,
enough Constitutional crises,
enough curated conflict,
enough manufactured emergencies,
enough presidential tweet tantrums,
enough intentional chaos?

Maybe it’s just me.

Maybe you’re fine with it all; maybe this is good enough for you; maybe you’ve resigned yourself to this dystopian white nationalist fever dream as inevitable. I sure as hell haven’t.

I’ve had enough of this frenetic circus of sociopathy over the past ten years to last a thousand lifetimes. I’m sick to my stomach of the nation we are, and I’m in-the-marrow-of-my-bones tired of being embarrassed of and grieving over the place I call home.

I want something better.

I want equity pursued.
I want bigotry shouted down.
I want justice escorted in.
I want compassion to trend.
I want kindness to go viral.
I want diversity to be celebrated.
I want the poor, tired, huddled masses to breathe again here.
I want ceremonial American “greatness” to give way to actual common goodness.
I want to stop being at the mercy of sadistic, hateful human beings who have contempt for everything and everyone.

What the hell do you want for this place, and are you willing to do whatever is necessary to get it?

November is coming, and there’s no way to overstate the reality that this is the last stand for all of it, for all of us. What we do over the coming weeks will initiate our rebirth or write our epitaph as a Republic.

You and I have this moment to end what we’ve had enough of and to usher in what we want to see more of; to demand what we cannot live without and to condemn what we will not abide.
We have this moment to create a home for ourselves and our children, and for other people’s children, for everyone who lives here and for all those who dream of living here.
We have this moment to leave something for the vast multitude on the horizon of history who will inherit this place; this moment, between the America that is and the America that could be—and for better or for worse, will be.

And it is all in our hands.

Regardless of their gerrymandering and suppression and intimidation and lawlessness, We The Pissed-Off People can wield our numbers to defy and defeat them. 

We simply have to decide to put aside our purity tests and our excuses and our infighting and our minor differences and our apathy, and do the damn work together instead of bickering, complaining, and distracting ourselves into fascism.

No politician is likely to move people who are still inexplicably undecided; those still stuck in laziness, hopelessness, or ignorance; those who still aren’t planning to use their voices.

Only you can do that.

Only you can reach people in the trenches of your relationships with them: in your home and your neighborhood and at your school and at work and on your timelines. You can be the difference in the day.

What have you had enough of over the last ten exhausting, disorienting, heartbreaking years?
What do you want to leave for those who will follow us?
What will you do in the coming days in response?

America is not in the hands of a politician or a preacher or an athlete or a celebrity; it’s in our hands. Yes, it’s true, no one is coming to save us. The only question left is, will we save ourselves?

In the weeks ahead, may you leverage your voice, your time, your resources, your circle of influence, your network, and your community, and may you do all you can to transform the America that is into the America that could be.

This will be the dawn or the death of the nation we dream of making.

In November, may we wake up in that hopeful, beautiful, glorious place of possibility again.

I have had enough of this divided, corrosive, violent, failing America.

Have you?

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