It is not lost on me that the day my family committed, on paper, to live in America until 2052, 19 children were gunned down in their elementary school. That is what 5/24/22, a date we wrote over and over, will always mean to this country.

I have always carried a deep ambivalence about the United States of America. Often, especially on days like yesterday, I simply say that I hate this country. The divide between who we are and who we purport to be is painfully vast. And the gulf is carved by pure hypocrisy.

When I was in high school, I told everyone I was likely to leave. The thing that has kept me here is what keeps almost everyone tied to their home country – their bond with the people they love. All of my family and a vast majority of my friends are here and plan to stay.

We are people of means (we just bought a house, after all, in this economy) and could live abroad and fly back enough. We are not, as so many are, literally tied to this land. Thus, I have to own the decision to stay as a choice. As I confronted in 2018.

The decision has nothing to do with loyalty or obligation. In looking at the horrific invasion of Ukraine, I know we would all become refugees and flee as fast as we could. Hell, I grabbed money and our passports an hour into January 6th. My values are not to stand and fight.

And yet, the commitment to stay does incur some obligation to try to improve the place, especially when the country has such disproportionate influence on the rest of the world, spreading its ethos of violence and corporatism across our species’ 7 billion members.

Increasingly this year, it’s become obvious that the fundamental problem is our unflinching devotion to a 231-year-old piece of paper that, while revolutionary at the time, was always steeped in sexism, classism, and white supremacy.

This piece of paper has undergone minor and insufficient edits, while simultaneously being reinterpreted to enhance the individual’s right to commit mass-violence and the corporation’s right to have utter primacy above individuals in all other regards and situations.

Every lawmaker, judge, and executor in our system must swear fealty to this archaic, outdated, and insufficient piece of paper in order to have influence on changing our system. As with capitalism itself, we have trapped ourselves in a player piano designed to make further traps.

I am earnestly skeptical that a slate of sweeping amendments or a full-scale Constitutional Convention would be enough to foment sufficient change in this country to fix things. But it nevertheless looks like a prerequisite to meaningful improvements even starting at this point.

In the meantime, the bridge to this level of overhaul is being able to see our country for what it is: a flawed, problematic place with a religious devotion to a woefully outdated set of norms and values that require radical correction.

Whether you love it or hate it, are staying or going, I think that’s the only way to take an honest look at an America that is systematically slaughtering its young.