Respite 41/Second Pint TAC

“New York, I love you, but you’re wearing me out.”-LCD Soundsystem.

America is tiring, these days: Exhausting, I think; a Wayfinder’s Doomtown IPA in front of me.

The Doomtown isn’t as scary as the name suggests. The nose isn’t very potent-faint, dried orange peel is what I’m collecting. Little touch of grassiness to it, too. The midrange steps up the orange flavor without bringing much sweetness, so when the bitterness rides into town, it overruns the rest of the beer. That bitterness lingers a bit too long as well, making for a beer that, while not flawed, doesn’t want to encourage me to get a second.

America is exhausting because we hired people to do a job and instead we are getting grifted.

Yes, I am aware that a level of grift has been going on for my entire lifetime. Sometimes, minimal grift is acceptable in order to get things done but this is a whole new level.

With a President who is actively making money off of the office coupled with a Representative set that is actively ignoring us, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve achieved the highest possible grift levels available.

So we chant and march and go to meetings and tell people who are supposed to listen to us that shit ain’t right but more and more, deaf ears are turned to us. When you hear numbers that suggest that 24 million people, minimum, will end up without heath insurance, and thus health care and the people insisting ‘wait, wait, this isn’t OK’ are being told to hold for the next available operator (wait time 2 years)…

Then the next day, we wake up to find out how we are being ignored and/or screwed over anew.

Well, that is tiring.

Is it tiring to have me repeat myself to the audience? Is it tiring to hear the cliche that ‘they just don’t care about us’? Imagine how I feel writing it out. I’d rather be talking more about beer, honestly.

Because writing it out doesn’t give me hope. Doesn’t make me inspired. It’s an effort to stay informed AND compassionate. I seem to recall being happier when I just had to be one or the other. I could afford to pick and choose when I would be one or the other.

That luxury is clearly gone from me now. Other people never have had that luxury, so I’m trying to keep some perspective.

But damnit. America, I love you, but you are wearing me out.

The second pint goes to the Treatment Advocacy Center.