All fun and games... Til somebody gets hurt

​I worry about us as Americans. I really do. It goes way past the way we talk to each other and the way our leaders to talk to each other. It’s something deeper. 

It’s easy to say that we freaking hate each other. That’s way too easy. There’s something deeper. I think we hate ourselves. 

I'm tired of
feeling shitty
about myself. Gray skies,
Empty checking account,
poor self image.

It goes well beyond the lies that our president tells and way beyond the venom that Democratic congressmen and women spew in their efforts to unseat him. People are picking sides. They pick a side that makes them feel better. It’s tough to walk around hating yourself.

I’m guessing that the three or four are wondering why I’m even talking about this. Most of the time I tell you about the crap in my life that’s related to radio. But that’s just it. The way we speak to each other. The way we choose sides. The hate, the loneliness, confusion, fear – it all plays out on my morning radio show. I’m not kidding.

I get the feeling sometimes that when a caller is complaining about Donald Trump or the fake media or leftist communists that they’re really just looking in the mirror. We all hate what we have become.

I'm tired of 
feeling tired.
The hamster wheel takes
a lot. Always pumping,
Always wired.

Last night, Dan Rather came on one of the hate shows. He said that it’s the worst he’s ever seen it in his 70 years or so of reporting on the state of affairs in America. I agree. It’s the worst that I’ve ever seen it, and that includes the Nixon years… when hippies were fighting in the streets with construction workers. 

“It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.” This is a line from my mom and my aunt Irene. My mom had five kids. My aunt Irene had nine. We would often get together in a mass of eating, laughing, fighting, running, wrestling, crying, shouting, farting, slapping, sweating, Pinochle-playing humanity. It was complete bedlam.

I loved every minute of it. We would wrestle and play football in the house, especially when there was snow on the ground. It would get rough. Eventually, one of us would be lying on the ground crying, holding his or her leg or arm or stomach. 

Up the stairs would come my mom or aunt Irene – “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.” 

This is the state of America. I admit to the guiltiest of pleasures in observing the chaos every night and talking about it on the radio every day. I look at MX’s memes, even when he’s making me look like a complete doofus. It’s all part of the same game. We’re wrestling upstairs and playing keep away with a pillow. 

I'm tired of
feeling worn. It's
been that way since I was
born. Relief is forgiveness
away, they say.

The injuries that resulted from roughhousing were not serious. Nobody went to the hospital or even sat out the next round of collisions. It was enough to just cry for a while.

But what happens to America if it goes past that? I, and perhaps you too, will feel a little guilty about enjoying the chaos, laughing at it, absorbing it… but not doing anything about it. 

I sense that we’re headed for something, a brick wall perhaps. This much hate and fear has to mean something. For us voyeurs on the whole thing, the worst thing would be if it just dissipated and went away and we went back to our same old boring lives.

I'm tired of
plastic people.
They're hard to destroy,
Easy to annoy, and
full of false ploy.

I’m committed to writing more and shorter entries. As with America, I don’t know where this will lead other than you always gotta remember, “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.”