I was a senior in high school when we were taught about the concentration camps in Germany. Being raised in a severely uneducated home, I was caught unaware that human beings could be so cruel in such modern times. Yeah, I knew old old old stuff was bad but assumed that we knew better now. Don’t people learn from their mistakes or is that simply another misnomer?

The teacher played that awful movie about Germany during the war and when it showed the lamp shades made from human skin, I bolted. We hadn’t learned anything. I was so disgusted and angry I quit school on the spot. I hated the world and omg fuck that school that tarnished my sensitivity. Two months from graduation and embittered by the realization that first of all, humans were still assholes and secondly, angry because the innocent German people just let it happen. Why did they just sit there and let it happen?

Eventually, I reabsorbed my idealism, but even then, in the farthest back rows of my mind, pushing, pushing forward, was the sinister knowledge that in other countries, massive senseless murders were happening all the fucking time. (Don’t get me started on school shootings other American senseless stupidities.)

But I remained steadfastly safe in my bubble of pretense. After all, I’m an American, a woman born and raised in the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation with liberty and justice for all. God bless America, dammit. No matter what, God bless goddamned fucking America. Dammit.

My Canadian friend recently asked what we were doing to stop the fascists from destroying our democracy. I guess a lot of us have stopped talking out loud so they don’t know.

Well fuck, here you go: We’re terrified. We see what’s happening. We make phone calls, write letters, contact our senators, our governors. We pray and pray and pray. Even those who don’t believe have fallen to prayer. Although I’m lucky enough to live in a blue state, our representatives are exhausted from the regime’s blatant disregard of our laws. They’re treating our Constitution like a piece of toilet paper stuck on the bottom of a shoe.

Our lives are consumed with fear and an intense soul-deep hatred that most of us never thought we were capable of feeling. We’re old hippies, for god’s sakes.

The news is on all day. We watch, transfixed in stunned horror at how quickly this devastation is changing our lives and destroying others, so many others. Devastating shit after devastating shit. We live under constant stress. Like shadow boxing under a full moon, it’s every single fucking where and every morning brings more despair. We are gobsmacked from the crimes against humanity.

Whenever someone from Canada says, “We’ll take you,” we raise our hands. When someone writes, “Let Canada adopt Washington, Oregon and California,” we merrily start singing their national anthem and suck down straight maple syrup like a drunk Russian with vodka.

We’re not quiet. We’re absorbing and angry every single fucking minute.

And I apologize from my very soul for ever judging the innocents from Nazi Germany. I get it. Please forgive me.

You from other countries, don’t be stupid like me. Please don’t hate us because a few are destroying our world.