I hear people who criticize America say, “ but I love America and…

I hear people who criticize America say, " America isn't perfect, but I love America and with America I will stay." I'm like that. But when I say it, I'm talking about two different Americas, the one that Trump wants to make great again and the one I was born in, travel in, live in, and that I will die in. That America and the one Trump wants to make again are not the same. Quite different, actually.

Yes, I went to public school and got fed the world through the eyes of a certain kind of blindness, learned all about the English colonies, the American revolution, the civil war, the Industrial Revolution, all that that made it seem America was special in such a way that the rest of the world has been just sitting around forever, throughout time, just sitting around waiting for whatever America was going to do about it or anything at all. America was the center of the world and the world was center of the universe and the only thing bigger than that was God with a capital G.

Meanwhile, back in my america, my nose ran clear and itchy from the cottonwood trees that blew white strands of seeds along the river banks, smothering the ground with snow like layers of sheet cloth. I ran full blast on the beach and dove head first into the icy Pacific waves, emerging later, burying myself in the warm sand, shivering and at night, I sat wherever I found myself, staring up into the shiny sea of stars, so thick with light, the manufactured light here on earth felt restrained and timid next to the Milky Way.

This was my America, though I called it the same thing every child calls it, this is mine, my place, it could be anywhere on earth, but it's here, right here, wherever I happened to be, the place my feet were standing on, invisible gravity holding me firmly to the earth. This is freedom, call it freedom. Every child in the world sees it, feels it all until the bombs from the other America, all the other America want to be's begin to fall. There are so many of those Americas, all with pseudonyms, they come and they go, leave their bloody fingerprints, hands on all those souls who will still look at the night, see the diminished starlight, but still dream, still say, 'this is my dream, my freedom,' and whether it's America, or Russia, or Israel or any other name that comes to take my freedom, they're always bound to lose because freedom always triumphs over those who come to take freedom away. Stay free, make freedom ring again, make Freedom great again.

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