That’s what the man told them. That’s what the masked American thugs who are ICE just ignored again. Ricardo Gonzalez is forty years old. He was born in Hanford, California. He worked for the city of Long Beach for about eight years, first in the health department and then in utilities, and he left that […]
Category: Citizenship (Page 1 of 3)
The Allies nearly skipped the trial completely. Early in 1945, Churchill and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau favored summary execution of the top Nazis. Secretary of War Henry Stimson argued that a court would do what a firing squad could not: build a record. President Truman appointed Robert Jackson, a sitting Supreme Court justice, as chief […]
There is a population growing in this country that the country has not found a good name for, because the country does not want to look at it directly. These are not radicals. They do not burn anything. They pay their taxes, help a friend move a couch, look for moments of joy. What they […]
I have hiked the forests that ring this lake. I have walked a dog along its shoreline when the water was the color of wet slate and the gulls were screaming. I have run its paths in July heat and February ice. I know this lake the way you know a neighbor for a lifetime. […]
Somewhere in America right now, a man is craning his neck over a stranger’s shopping cart. He has spotted something obscene. Not a weapon. Not contraband. A box of Trix. The stranger paid with SNAP. The man does the math immediately, the way outrage always does math: badly, and with total confidence. He has decided […]
The Independence of Conscience
Every Fourth of July, Americans light fireworks to celebrate a piece of paper. It is wise remembering what that paper was. The Declaration of Independence was not a legal filing. It was fifty-six men committing treason against the Crown, in writing, names attached, knowing failure meant the gallows. Jefferson did not hedge. He signed his […]
The Great American State Fair opened on June 25th on the National Mall. It was supposed to run sixteen days and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. It was supposed to be a world’s fair, a unifying spectacle, a moment that transcended the noise. It lasted about forty minutes before the Ferris wheel […]
Freedom to Degrade
On June 14, the White House South Lawn hosted a UFC card, the first professional sporting event ever held on the grounds of the presidential residence. The marketing was thick. 250 years of America. Flag Day. The president’s 80th birthday. All stacked into one broadcast. Then heavyweight Josh Hokit beat Derrick Lewis by TKO in […]
June arrives, and so does the annual conservative grievance convocation. They already scheduled their Festival of Snowflakes for the 14th. Dear Leader’s birthday. A fitting occasion. So just like every June, the flags go up. The rainbow flags, not only the American ones, though they will tell you it is the American ones they are […]
There is a man you should know. His name is Russell Ellis. He grew up in the mountains of North Carolina inside a home where racism was not a flaw to be corrected but a foundation to be built upon. He was raised, as he puts it plainly, not merely around racists, but by them. […]