It’s above 100 degrees in Las Vegas. In such hell weather, you usually see homeless people hunting for corners or any scrap of shade. Sometimes they stretch a piece of cloth or cardboard into a roof, a fragile shield against the sun, while the pavement grills them as they sleep or sit on it.
Today, Monday morning, on my way to drop off my daughter at school, we saw many police cars. Big, tough policemen in full gear, bulletproof vests strapped tight, pushing homeless people away and seizing their cloth roofs. All to make America great again.
Then I drove to the state welfare and support services office, where I had an appointment I’d been waiting weeks for. Only to find it closed, with a sign: “Due to the statewide network issue.”
At the gas station, as I filled my car, I watched several drug transactions happen openly, in front of everyone. A woman slumped beside the dumpster, drooling, absent from her own body and life. I thought of checking on her, then wondered what benefit there was in being woke in this life. If the system is already smashing the vulnerable, perhaps letting them drift into the numbness of drugs is kinder than suffering under the hand of fascism.
Now I’m at my desk. Tomorrow I have to teach students how to write for the academy—how to search and think, analyze and express. And I have to do it without mentioning the genocide in Gaza, or the fascism taking over our world. If I do, I risk being guillotined by the censorship and punishment machine.
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