We Americans have lost so much in 2022.

  • several rights that treated women as human beings with a single SCOTUS act of malice
  • government’s ability (& willingness) to address climate change to save the human species
  • renewed life for the moribund fossil fuel industry just when renewables were set to launch
  • confidence that when we vote (as too few Americans do) those votes will be actually be counted
  • curbs on police misconduct that conjure false confessions leading to baseless imprisonment & death penalties
  • death penalties not stopped, adding firing squad option to keep the U.S. exceptional on the world stage
  • financial support to keep children out of poverty and, for emphasis, taking away school lunches for the neediest
  • radically escalating military spending beyond what is necessary and requested, a rush to overfund
  • refusal to enact needed laws for the people by a paralyzed Senate (thanks Manchin & Sinema & 49 Republicans)
  • nearly lost our entire democracy thanks to a petulant child-man who can’t stand losing but somehow passes as “strong”
  • our sense of unity in these United States
  • our ability to agree about facts and science, making displays of overt stupidity prideful acts
  • Stephen Sondheim (hence his Flag Song that goads us to hold onto the “Idea” of what America can be)

“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Frederick Douglass, 1852

It always was, and remains, Slavery. Say it aloud Texans.  “Involuntary relocation” it most certainly was not !!!!!!