I'm descended from slave owners and Confederate soldiers. Doesn't mean I'm responsible for what they did, but no one's saying I am. It is important to acknowledge our past though, and acknowledge that maybe our ancestors and some usually-revered figures in our history don't quite deserve the honor we bestow upon them. It's time to cast a more scrutinizing eye upon our history, and how our country was built, otherwise we'll never fix what's broken because we'll just keep repeating the same cycles. The US is a country founded upon the notion of freedom. We should have the freedom to question everything. No, strike that--WE DO have the freedom to question everything. There's nothing wrong with using that right.
For the record, I get people are uncomfortable with my rhetoric. I know for certain a few of y'all are sick of it. I feel the exact same way. But...I'm just not laughing off this kinda stuff anymore. I used to do that all the time, and now I look back and realize I was part of the problem. I don't want to be like that anymore. It might get me banned someday, and that's okay. I promise if that happens I'm just gonna very peacefully move on with my life. I've got some monumental life changes on the horizon soon (nothing bad, I promise) and if nothing else, this tumultuous year has taught me that I don't need sports as much as I thought I did. There are more important things to talk about, especially things I don't want to talk about.
My old man and my grandfather (BTW, he was racist too, but then was confronted by a daughter who married a black man and a son who married a Korean woman, and kinda had to change his ways...and he did, he and I were very close) served as well, Army and Marines, respectively. Not going to sit here and say that anyone who wore the uniform(s) fought for a shitty country or cause. The only ones who did that were those guys wearing gray uniforms from 1861-1865 in this country, and they were the enemy. America at the end of the day is an idea, and a good one when executed properly. Unfortunately, there are a lot of times we didn't execute properly, especially right now. Like a team of engineers who suffered a setback, we should acknowledge that and learn from it, design something better.
I have lived a nice, peaceful, comfortable, successful life. And I'm not taking a shred of credit for it either. I've been given a damn good hand. I'd like for a lot of other people here to get that too. And that's entirely possible...we just have to acknowledge a few very obvious and basic wrongs.
Does America suck? It certainly hasn't for me. For some people? Yeah, I think it does. We should look into fixing that.