I am trying to put heaviness in me these days; Regardless of the nagging sickness that sits in the pit of my stomach every morning, I try to push it away.
It is not merely a growing nihilism that realizes how rapidly the foundations of our republic are dissolving.
It is not just black frustration at the rapid and seemingly inexplicable erosion of human and civil rights.
It’s not just leadership’s grief that comes from witnessing so much unnecessary pain, so much preventable pain, so much manufactured chaos.
Besides all this, I think the real heart disease comes from the realization of my complicity in crimes against humanity.
As a taxpaying American, I am complicit in the genocide in Gaza.
I watch breathless videos of Palestinian children mauled by AIPAC-funded drone strikes, elderly people executed by IDF soldiers, Israeli political leaders praising the barbaric destruction of Gaza, and I know my taxable income is funding the killing.
As a taxpaying American, I am killing the people of Iran, Lebanon, Cuba and Ukraine.
It is saddening to know that our leadership is allowing or permitting deadly, wasteful, and ill-advised wars of greed, distraction, and geography all over the world and that I am somehow aiding and abetting them.
As a taxpaying American, I am starving people in New Jersey.
Tortured souls lie within the hellscapes of Delaney Hall, forced to eat maggot-infested food, denied basic health care, shown no human comforts, enduring a dire malaise that has no reason to exist other than the cruelty of the socialists who created it with the resources of my life’s work.
As a taxpaying American, I am attacking girls and young women in Texas.
Realized that the horrors inside an inaccessible compound in San Benito and the unimaginable brutality being visited upon the most vulnerable and helpless there would not have happened without my unwitting, yet tangible, financial support.
As a taxpaying American, I fear immigrants terribly.
Made worse by the knowledge that a masked Gestapo-esque army of deranged monsters relentlessly pursues my black and brown neighbors where they work, study, worship and raise their families makes my brow sweat.
As a taxpaying American, I am oppressing violently segregated people.
It breaks my heart to know that despite my work to try to be an LGBTQ ally and advocate for the inherent worth of every human being, my taxes are bankrolling homophobic and transphobic legal attacks on transgender teenagers, on same-sex couples, on marriage equality.
Like most people who call this place home, I was weaned on a story of this nation that was part curated myth, part racist whitewashing, part genuine desire and part American exceptionalism that steadfastly refused to accept blame for inhumanity.
The central narrative I inherited from my pastors, teachers, parents, media, and politicians was that the United States was a place that, though terribly flawed, tried to be a shining beacon for the world’s weak, hungry, and suffering.
It may be a mixture of ignorance, privilege, and wishful thinking, but I fell through the lies and realized that this story was never true. It’s enough of an existential gut punch.
And it’s another thing to fully realize that for your entire life, but deeply in these present days, your work and creativity have financed the hatred, inequality, and brutality that you’ve spent a lifetime aiming to eradicate.
There is a futility that comes from when that truth is fixed; When you are a pacifist subsidizing war. I think it’s so hard for so many of us right now. We are trying to fight for and with our country at the same time.
I know we are not powerless at this point, but I recognize that the path out of this is unclear.
I can definitely say that as a tax paying American who loves humanity and hates the nation we are, it is hard to live with so much blood on my hands.
Note: Of course, we are not willingly participating in these atrocities, but it is impossible to divorce ourselves from what our leadership does in our name, and this is the struggle many of us find ourselves in.
iStock Image
