When I went to visit Cousin Ed in his latest hometown and meet his kid, we took the entire posse out to a local park where there happened to be gigantic Sikh temple party, and I thought about the massacre that happened at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin a few years ago. Someone came up to us and welcomed us, said we could eat their food, and play in their bouncy castles (there were like four different bouncy castle like options. This was like a kid fantasy. Who goes to a park to find amusement rides available for free?)
As a child in U.S. schools, I was spoon-fed the following: America is great! Things are so much better for women and non-whites than they used to be! Capitalism is awesome! Reality is not that simple.
I’m questioning all that now. So many of our greatest industries and companies that make beaucoup bucks do so on the backs of poor and working poor people. We don’t have an agriculture business without illegal immigrant working for less than minimum wage. New York’s amazing restaurant scene is partly due to the paid-under-the-table-less-than-you-can-believe wages to bus boys and dishwashers, who are definitely not citizens. And the gun industry is another one of these. I sincerely doubt the NRA want to lose their kids and grandkids to gun violence, but the need to make a profit is greater than the value of human life. (See Sandy Hook, see Parkland, see Pulse Night Club, see anything you want. The day I visited cousin Ed, there were two massacres.) (Currently, in New York State, prisoners are producing sanitizer for no pay, but cannot actually have sanitizer.)
There is something deeply sick about our country that values cash over lives. That is really too much to bear.