Everyone thinks they know what America needs to get us back on the right track, and, unsurprisingly, what everyone seems to feel is needed is more of what they themselves like and or less of what they themselves don't like. I've been giving this a lot of thought lately, and I've come to the conclusion that what America needs is not more church, and it's certainly not more guns. It's not higher wages, or more regulations. It's not a return to those halcyon days of the 1950's, when everything was just like "Leave It To Beaver," plus all the Jim Crow, Commie-hating, beating-the-crap-out-of-queers-with-impunity that we conveniently forget.

No, what America needs, now perhaps more than ever, is a massive high colonic. That's right. We need a gigantic, collective enema to flush all the bullshit that we love so much out of our systems because, let's face it, we all love our own bullshit, but it's poisoning us. I realize that this may seem a little extreme, but let's face it; a Jamie Lee Curtis yogurt is just not up to the task. We're all, every single one of us, so backed up with our own bullshit that we've pretty much gone completely blind. We can't see past our own bullshit. Perhaps the saddest thing is that we're never too backed up with our own bullshit that we don't have room for other people's bullshit too. As long as their bullshit matches up with our own, of course. That's why the makers of bullshit are so successful.

We're like hungry baby birds waiting for Bill O'Reilly, Alan West, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, or Michael Moore, as well as the legions of meme-makers and internet trolls, to barf more already-processed-for-easy-digestion bullshit down our greedy throats (and yes, I know I'm mixing disgusting metaphors). We're all so gorged on our particular brands of bullshit that we're ready to explode. If you don't believe me, take a look at your friend's Facebook feeds. If you didn't know them, and they weren't agreeing with you, would you really believe they were rational human beings? For that matter, take a look at your own feed. Look objectively at the stuff you post, and especially the memes and other manufactured stuff you share. I looked at mine, and realized I needed to adjust my thinking, or at least my sharing.

See, the problem is we've become addicted to bullshit. We love it. We can't get enough of it. We're completely bloated with it. When I was a kid, the song "Junk Food Junkie" was popular. We've become a nation of bullshit junkies. Of course, we don't see our bullshit as bullshit. Oh no, our bullshit is "information," and it's the other side that's full of bullshit. Naturally, that's just more bullshit. We're all full of it. We're so full of it that we're all springing leaks and spraying our own high-pressure bullshit all over not only our social media, but at work, at church, and at home. We're barfing it into our own baby's mouths to make sure they get the taste for the right kind of bullshit.

There's a popular meme that pops up pretty much every time some nut shoots a bunch of people: "It's not a gun problem, it's a heart problem." No kidding. The problem is that none of our hearts are working right. We're all packed so tightly with bullshit that it's a wonder they beat at all. If you take someone who already has a heart problem, and pack them this tight with bullshit, it's not surprising that their heart can quit working at all. The heart is not the only organ that's affected of course. It covers our eyes, and blinds us to the truth. It blocks up our ears, and keeps us from hearing the truth. It overwhelms and shuts down our kidneys, so that even our blood is full of bullshit, circling endlessly through our systems and poisoning us.

That's why we all need a good cleaning-out: we need to get all of that nasty bullshit out of our systems, to uncover our eyes, to unblock our ears, to let our hearts beat again, so we can stop hating so much, to get our kidneys working again, so they can filter out the bullshit as it comes in. So we can try to live in truth. And what is this "Truth?" That none of us is all right, or even all wrong (political pundits and religious extremists excepted, of course). The truth is that we need to talk to one another, not at one another. We need to be able to admit that we may be at least partially wrong, and that other points of view have some merit.

We have to face the fact that not all Clinton supporters are communist sleeper agents left over from the Cold War, who want to replace Old Glory with a rainbow hammer and sickle (for those of you born in the '90s and later, that's the symbol of the USSR— look it up). We also have to face the fact that not all Trump supporters are in-bred, gun-toting, morons who just want to shoot a gay Muslim from Mexico.

We have to face the fact that the vast majority of people on the other side of the issues are very much like ourselves, and when we give in to hatred and can't and dogma instead of thinking and listening and then thinking again before speaking, it's really only ourselves we are bullshitting.

P.S. If you should be inspired to write an article similar to this one, here's a word of advice: When looking for a cover photo, don't just google "enema" and click on "images." It can produce some startling and disturbing results.