Being American at the moment makes me feel like one of the in-laws who invites you to dinner and then asks you to pay for it. And when you don’t, I call you ungrateful. Jimmy invites Timmy to play basketball with him and then invoices Timmy for the shared use of Jimmy’s ball. Good business. Poor friendship. Politics is neither. It is about control.
When I see a media post by Ted Nugent mocking an animal’s lack of a sense of boundaries or property because they don’t think from an anthropocentric perspective, I only see an extra-species dismissal: it’s Nugie boy who doesn’t understand boundaries. To me, Ted Nugent is the one who would look good, and has the right to look good on the end of my fist for stepping into my space uninvited. And feel good?! Fist on bone and teeth. The popping sound. It is something a savage can understand. A wannabe savage can’t. And certainly not a coward with a gun who makes a sport of eradication. Now, hunting for sport is eradication, herd control. But it isn’t some ideological game between man and a lesser creature. It is pragmatic, respectful of life, not dismissive of dignity.
If the authority makes a boundary and concomitant laws and enforces them, it doesn’t matter the form of animal; the law is enforced indiscriminately. The raccoon isn’t stupid because it picks through your trash; you are stupid for making a hilarious, ill-educated game of pest control. Perhaps this ditch-level thinking makes it easy to dismiss the beating of a homeless person because it happens to make an evil son of a bitch happy to beat on him.
This is what is going on in America right now. An ill-educated game of pest control by an unwarranted and masked authority. Low-level termination operatives. The kids from the back row with chips on their shoulders from either too much discipline or too little, who never participate in scholastic activities, but are the ones to volunteer to catch the rats that get loose from their cages. “Enemies, enemies everywhere, and only a feral cow to shoot. Gah! Ah, well, get the camera ready. Wait! Let me put my mask on.” This is moral eradication. And morality is always masked.
This is the age of untruth, with bladder thorns uncircumspect, and arrogant ignorance staining the collar. No reprieve in any of the time zones from the stodgy faces of marionettes soberly speaking authority in lousy discourse, with fumes ranting, and dragnets screeching. For there are signs everywhere YOU ARE IN OUR ZONE NOW. ALL THINGS GREAT OR SMALL WILL ABIDE.
And in that vestibule where the moon tarries, where once the down-lined coats flurried, where polyester now patrols, in the dawn of what will be, the curtain is pulled back to reveal the source of this mirage. Yet my eyes see nothing.
Thank you for reading.
Take care.
rjh
Addendum: It is February 14, 2026. My brother would’ve been 63 years old today. The socio-political content of this post brought back our conversations together as teenagers. He was killed by a drunk driver at the age of 17, and I have been trying to think lately about things we did together, what he thought, how he reacted to my presence. I sure could’ve used his companionship all these years. I ask myself, did I stop listening after he died? Why? I think the guitar can explain it. Sometimes I only have ears to hear the guitar.
To Be American
4 responses to “To Be American”
Great writing.
I connected with the addendum. Very touching actually
Thank you!
Very true and good post. And I’m sorry that you lost your brother when he was only 17 years old. And music is worth a good listen.
Thank you, Diana. Playing guitar has always helped me to put things in perspective. But it, too, can start to sound solipsistic without some coaxing.