Fact Check Me: Dear America, Step Outside
Dear America, you need to get out more.
Every one of your problems comes from the same place:
you can’t see your problems from the outside.
You’re too deep in the machinery, wedged between the gears,
trying to judge right from wrong while you’re still inside the damn engine.
You nitpick the small stuff
and let idiots sprint unchecked through the big stuff —
the issues that hit people every single day.
Why?
Because you’re stuck inside looking out.
Try fixing a car engine while sitting inside one of the valves.
Everything looks clean from in there.
“Gee, I don’t know why the fuel injection can’t get its shit together.”
Meanwhile the whole system is choking, starving,
running on less fuel than it needs just to function —
let alone thrive.
A country is an engine.
Moving parts.
Different components doing different jobs.
All of them matter.
And a good mechanic knows you can’t diagnose anything
until you look at the whole damn car.
You want to go live alone with the other six people in Wyoming?
Fine.
But you’re still living off tax dollars from California and New York.
Those people you treat like enemies —
the weirdos, the artists, the immigrants, the gays, the drag queens,
the ones with purple hair and degrees you like to mock —
they drive your economy.
They fund your roads.
They power your infrastructure.
They keep the lights on.
If every person in a blue state said “You know what?
Fuck it — I’m out,”
packed a bag and “went back where they came from,”
what would you do?
Who’s running the grid?
Who’s teaching the kids?
Who’s doing the surgery?
Who’s designing the tech?
Who’s printing the textbooks you’d need
to relearn the things you burned?
You’ve got seven people, remember.
And none of them know how to restart a nation from scratch.
The reason the rest of the world shakes its head at you
isn’t because we don’t have problems —
we do.
Plenty.
It’s because your problems are so easy to see from the outside.
Your system of government contradicts itself.
Your people are vastly undereducated.
And yes — countries you’d call “third world”
produce students who test higher, think deeper,
and understand the world better than yours do.
I’m not saying you’re stupid.
I’m saying you built a system
designed to keep you that way.
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But America, I’m asking you — begging you —
stop looking at your country through the lens of an “American.”
Your whole identity has been built on propaganda.
Myth.
Marketing.
Try seeing yourself the way the rest of us see you —
through the eyes of a neighbor.
Not even the literal kind (though you could use some help with that too).
I mean the neighbors in the next town,
the next state,
the ones with the blue hair,
the ones you don’t understand.
The ones you pretend don’t count.
Nations are neighbors too.
We all live in the same neighborhood called Earth —
at least until Elon convinces enough lonely men
to follow him to Mars.
And let’s be honest:
You’re not living on another planet any time soon.
Not comfortably.
Not easily.
Not at all.
All the answers to all your problems
are right here.
Pick up a book.
Pick up a newspaper.
Turn on the BBC.
Hell — try watching CNN World sometime.
The one we get.
Not the one you get at home,
with the same three stories looped endlessly
until your brain folds in on itself.
When you travel and turn on CNN,
you see the whole world —
culture, science, conflict, discovery,
the human condition.
All the stuff your own networks ignore
because there’s no profit in keeping you informed.
Only in keeping you agitated.
Your country was built on sizzle
sold to you by the people
who always eat the steak.
And you wonder why you’re hungry?
Step outside.
Look around.
You might notice you’re starving
not because the world forgot to feed you —
but because you’ve been sitting in a goddamn paint shop,
not a restaurant.
Layer after layer of gloss
over problems you never fix,
just repaint
until they bubble through the surface
and demand your attention again.
And you repaint.
And repaint.
And repaint.
Eventually, you have to stop and ask:
Why do I keep painting
when the wall underneath
is falling apart?
Fact check me.