Home of the brave and the blowhards

When I was a little girl, the fourth of July was one of my favorite holidays. Of course I loved the fireworks, but I remember one year at a big party and fireworks show, and they sang "Proud to be an American." I put my hand over my heart and I cried, because I did feel proud.

Times have changed. I have grown up and lived over two years (11 months in France September 2010 - July 2011 and Cambodia since July 2012) abroad. I have watched the disastrous reign of Bush and partied in the streets when Obama was elected. I have read and ignored and generally pretended I know nothing of the country where I grew up and still holds my citizenship.

As I have mentioned, I do not much like politics, anywhere in the world, and especially these days. But I have to say that I have been utterly and completely disgusted by the recent political situation in America.

I knew it was a mess before, with the Republicans heading down a dangerous fundamentalist path and flatly refusing to negotiate anything that even so much as hints against their own agenda, and the liberals flatly refusing the same thing (though I tend to agree with the liberal agenda much more often than the Republicans, I have been quite dismayed by both party's complete unwillingness to even consider listening to each other.) I did not agree with Obama's hardline on Syria. I do not like the US foreign policy period.

Let me put it this way: that the Republicans have shut down the government because they didn't get their way is a disgrace to democracy.

But it's more than that.

This is personal.

I have watched my father struggle with the healthcare system over the course of and continuing over two serious accidents. I have heard of how my deathly ill sister was refused at a number of clinics because she had no insurance, and my financially struggling sister ready to spend 300 dollars out of pocket -- no small change -- simply to get someone to look at her.

My sister Darcy ended up in the hospital for two and a half months while my family struggled daily with social workers to figure out how to get her the care she needed.

And now, here we are. Maybe it is expensive, maybe the system will be flawed, but in Obamacare I saw an opportunity for me and my family - none of us with health insurance, no way to afford it, and all sorts of reasons why companies would deny us -- to get valuable coverage.

But because some blowhards have decided they disagree and are completely unwilling to negotiate or even consider that the system now may be broken -- and it is, I assure you, broken -- the government is shut down, and the whole country is suffering. I see no end in sight or even any sign that anybody would rather have a functioning government over getting their way.

No.

I am not proud to be an American. Not anymore, and not now.