Here We Go Again. Americans Are Done With This Mess.
By: Jessica Wildfire
Tags: Politics, Government, Society, News, Economics

Here We Go Again. Americans Are Done With This Mess.

We’re post-outrage.

Photo by Brian Wertheim on Unsplash

“Here we go again,” I thought.

A few years ago, some of my coworkers raised a little money for me and my spouse. We were expecting a baby. They tried to give it to me at a meeting, in a little bag with some gift cards and newborn clothes.

My boss didn’t like this.

He snatched the bag from my hands and then stood up in front of the room. He gave a speech about how much I meant to the department, and how everyone — especially him — had chipped in.

Then he presented it to me, as if he’d sewn the clothes himself. He made me give a little acceptance speech.

The whole thing was awkward.

Later, I found out that he hadn’t actually contributed anything. Not one dime. If nothing else, it was a valuable lesson in human behavior. He did this kind of thing all the time, and I finally learned to expect it.

Remind you of anyone?

We have nothing left to say.

As Donald Trump stands in front of a camera days before Christmas, threatening to veto a stimulus package that took nine months to hammer out, we’ve got nothing left to say.

Anyone with a brain knows what’s going on. This is another game. It’s a version of “here we go again.”

And it’s not just Trump anymore.

It’s all of them.

Our faith in our government was already at an all-time low. This takes it down yet another rung, but it really couldn’t get much worse. We’re not sure if Democrats could do more, but they sure do seem to be getting the short end of the stick these days. They always seem to be letting the sharks eat our lunch. Ask one of the few remaining Americans with any sanity, and they’ll shrug and tell you they just don’t care anymore.

It’s always something now.

We’re sick of it.

We live in the land of maybe.

Our government doesn’t function anymore.

Everyone knows it.

We’re on our own. We have been for about a year now. No, we’re not whittling sticks into spears and hunting squirrels just yet, but we know the limits of human kindness. It’s not extinct, but definitely endangered. For those who haven’t lost their empathy, they’re simply stretched too thin to take care of anyone but their closest kin right now.

Can you blame them?

Everything else is a coin toss. Sure, there’s still some institutional oomph left, but not much. Maybe you’ll be able to get some unemployment assistance. Maybe you’ll get food stamps. Maybe your mail will arrive on time, delivered to you by an exhausted postal worker. Maybe you’ll get a job with health insurance. The truth is that all the things that felt like entitlements and guarantees ten or fifteen years ago are gone.

Anyone who has anything today is extremely lucky.

Some of us don’t even know it.

Our politicians don’t care about us.

Does this really need to be said, again?

It’s about time we stopped falling for the circus act. Our politicians take turns grandstanding now. It’s all they do.

Everything is about taking credit and blaming the other side. They don’t care who gets hurt in the process. They spend more time tweeting than they do actually negotiating anything.

We seem to encourage it.

Lots of Americans are on auto-response.

A few days ago, I wrote an essay about how millennials are struggling to live a decent life, even while they work full-time jobs and string together hustles on the side. Millennials aren’t the only ones dealing with an impossible economy, but we’re a disproportionate majority.

Amid the responses, stuff like this stood out:

Stop whining and get out there and do something about your situation yourself.

That happens all the time now. It’s normal to think that way. Americans like this are on auto-response.

They don’t read. They don’t listen.

When they hear about someone else’s struggles, they assume it’s their fault. Like our leaders, they just don’t care.

They want to grandstand.

We’re used to dysfunction.

We’re no longer surprised by anything.

We don’t expect things like stimulus checks anymore. We expect more bad news and hardship. When we hear about the new Super-Covid variant on its way, we shrug. We say, “It figures.”

This is life now, waiting for the next burden. Meanwhile, we enjoy the little moments while we can.

We’ve given up on recruiting anyone else to wear a mask. We’re not trying to use logic or reason on our opponents anymore. We’re protecting ourselves, and the handful of people we care about.

That’s all we can do.

The time for stimulus is over.

This stimulus was always a joke.

Our government is like the cavalry showing up after we’ve lost the battle. See, we lost the fight with Covid. It won. It’s pillaging every town in America. We’re sick. We’re scared. We’re out of work.

Our daycares have already shut down. Our teachers and healthcare workers are already burned out. Many of them are planning to leave. We’re just waiting for the smoke to clear.

We’re not giving up on life, just help.

We’re just giving up on the government. We know what’s up. We’ll be expected to raise our kids and hold down jobs without any kind of help that would’ve made a difference.

We’ve been doing it.

We’re going to be in charge of our own health, mental and otherwise. We’ll just have to make sure we don’t get sick enough to need medical attention anytime in the next year, or the year after that.

That’s not news either.

We’re done with outrage.

There’s always going to be a majority of people who enjoy shouting and grandstanding. It’s no secret that a wide range of Americans prefer to ensure each other’s destruction.

Then there’s the us, the select few who watch it all with a rising sense of apathy. We see what good comes from outrage. It doesn’t change anything. It just saps up our precious energy.

We’re done with it.

Help us, or don’t help us. We stopped waiting a long time ago. We know the only thing we can do is help ourselves. We can help a handful of other people, but we can’t save everyone. It makes us a little bitter, but not angry. That said, we can still express our disappointment.

Our leaders are just like my boss.

They’ll swipe something right out of your hands, only to deliver a speech and present it back to you like a precious gift. Take your “gift,” but you don’t have to say thank you. They haven’t earned it.

Not even close.

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