The United States is not a naturally derived country. It is literally an experiment with energetic ties to Great Britain. It was born out of many things including escaping tyranny & persecution. It was built on the backs of theft, indentured servants, & slave labor amongst other things. It was never meant to be home or a comfortable for anyone other than the descendants of those who came on them boats to build the new colony. Hypothetically, the U.S. in its current iteration should not exist.
Prior to, during, and after independence, American English, the laws, the systems, the economics, etc. were formulated, built or created in resistance to and opposite of its parent country, with a motivational foundation of liberty, justice, equality & all that jazz. But not for everyone. The U.S. became a multicultural country unwillingly and has been reckoning what to do about i for a long time now.
I need to do some more research into how immigration over time fits into all of this, but when I sit with the fact that the U.S. is an experiment that is currently being sabotaged, a lot of stuff makes better sense. The U.S. was and is a beautiful concept and is & would be a more beautiful country if we could get our collective shit together (putting it mildly). The encouragement & space for self determination is one of this country’s biggest strengths and greatest gifts to humanity and certain folks don’t want others to have that.
As I reflect on my own life, being the child of immigrants, I marvel at how my identity has formed and my sense of self has been impacted by environment and location. Blowing out the view of myself is helping me to better navigate a season of grief and transition. So watching all that’s happening is vexing to my soul. It’s fascinating to see greed, evil, & insecurity personified. All the forms that it takes, all the people that it corrupts, & all the industries that are built in response to managing bad, piss poor and downright evil human behavior. It’s shameful how greed & scarcity mindedness are doing us all in.
The wild part is that our religions & our spirituality & our various practices are all supposed to help us human better so that we can avoid *all of this*. But I don’t think it’s working. Someone should look into that.
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Life doesn’t have to be as hard and as vile as we make it- at the personal level or at the collective level. But here we are, making it hard and keeping it vile. It’s all vibes, I guess.
I suppose that this is what it feels like to live through the fall of empire. The U.S. will still exist- but how it looks in the aftermath is anyone’s guess.
Words are spells and it occurs to me that essentially, these folks “in charge” have spent well over 200 years trying to break the oath they took in exchange for their own liberation & freedom because they didn’t realize it included everyone. What does give me an edge of hope is that in the current chaos & destruction, we now have an opportunity to imagine & build a society that’s true to its word.