‘How does it feel to be American these days?’ – 21 painfully honest answers

To say America is having a turbulent time at the moment is an understatement.

From Trump starting trade wars willy-nilly to Musk shutting down USAID, a lot of worrying things are happening at breakneck speed.

But what does it feel like for the people who are there, trying to get on with their everyday lives while chaos unfolds around them? User TraditionalMix4250 posed this question on the AskReddit page:

‘How’s it feel to be American these days?’

And there were lots of people across the pond who had something to say.

1.

‘Half the country thinks winter is over and we are positioned to return to greatness.

The other half thinks we’re approaching Holocaust 2.0.’
–petiepablo888

2.

‘Like I’m tied to a chair while watching a toddler play with a gun.’
–forthepuppy

3.

‘It feels like I’m a child in my father’s car while he has road rage and is flipping everybody else off while provoking them with his careless, insane drunk driving.’
–GreenIce2022

4.

‘At the bottom of everything I am just so goddam sick of Trump being at the forefront of the universe for the last 10 goddam years. It’s inescapable and exhausting.’
–evenphlow

5.

‘As John Coffey said in The Green Mile. ‘I’m tired boss.”
–ilikespicysoup

6.

‘Like I should buy some guns and a piece of land on a remote mountain, and be prepared to hunt and forage for my survival for the rest of my life.’
–Nytherion

7.

‘I’m a federal worker. The last two weeks have been surreal.

‘I’m a top performer – exceptional performance appraisals the last 15 years of my career, willingly works unpaid overtime, bestowed several civilian awards and director coins – and now I have to spend every day refreshing my news feed and work email wondering if my job is gone because of someone who isn’t in my agency says so.’
–GumEbears

8.

‘Scary and embarrassing.’
–Otherwise-Tune5413

9.

‘I grew up in a conservative family from the South. We didn’t hate Democrats at all and we were friends with everyone. We just held different opinions with some.

‘Now the conservatives down here are jumping at the chance to out-conservative each other. It’s embarrassing. And if you don’t follow lock step with them you are the enemy. The days of people on other sides of the fence being nice to each other are gone.

‘What really gets me is that my conservative family members actually do hate the things the ultra conservative are doing. However, they just can’t force themselves to vote Democrat, so they vote for these lunatics and hope for the best.’
–McRambis

10.

‘Doesn’t feel good. Feels up we used up all of our social credit from WWII and now we’re that star high school football player at the local bar 20 years later.’
–TheAdamantChild