I cannot call myself a proud American any more. I cringe at airports when I travel.

Thanks for an inspiring essay/speech.

You might find resonance in Umair Haque’s essays. He’s one of a growing number of young American writers like you on Medium.

Not many Americans have the courage or honesty to call out genocide. The day our media use that word, genocide, perhaps the tide will turn.

Jake Tapper of cnn gave a bona fide white supremacist a platform from which to hold forth. Why??? For ratings? That’s reprehensible.

Genocide lives deep in the bones of our country. Indigenous peoples of America were butchered systematically. Imported diseases ravaged whatever was left over. Now a paltry few are left to languish in ‘reservations’ which are bereft of the comforts we enjoy in our manicured (ugh) suburbia and glitzy metropolises. We’re not a kind nation.

We use legal and illegal immigrants to keep our McMansions in working order and pay then below legal minimum wage. That’s exploitation.

Slavery was genocide. Even when it ended, it didn’t end. Just turned soft. And it continues in another sorry garb. That is reprehensible too. We are hypocrites. We feign compassion as and when it suits us. Then we invade other nations.

But one must battle on. Fascism has taken root. The trillion dollar question is how to weed it out. Trump wants to make America ‘white’ again. Well, it never was. Nor will it ever be. Lady Liberty lives. But barely. We must resuscitate her.