America’s President is a thief – of mind no less than money.

One can’t stop thinking about him, because he won’t stop thinking about avenging himself on his enemies, a vast crowd that includes me. His henchmen are eying me now – too measly an adversary to mess with, but if my readership grows… They’re eying you too, for reading me. To tyrants, disagreement means disloyalty, treason, a capital offense. It’s not just brown people they’re after; any independent thinker is as bad as brown.

Such scrutiny intimidates. I say you and I are chatting on our daily stroll – and we are – but our words are not private. To demur, deprecate, deplore aloud is to defy. The Nameless One seeks to eradicate those he dislikes – and gloats over each kill.

I’m not extolling my courage for speaking my mind. Would I take the risk if my life were really on the line? I’d like to think so, but martyrdom is easier in posse than in esse. Many the Galileo in their dreams who before the Inquisitor melts like butter in a skillet. (Vide, all Republican legislators, but for a brace of heroes and, at the other extreme, a rat-pack of zealots.) Would I stride gallantly to the gallows – “I only regret I have but one life to live for my country”? Color me unsure.

Civil war sets all on alert, for all are now combatants, sworn to each other’s erasure when push comes to shove. There are now two armies in America, for or against; to claim allegiance to neither is to anger both. In peacetime, debates can be family quarrels, but not in war; no more can a Ukrainian hug a Russian. Sorrowfully, to hate is our duty till the hour of surrender.

I sigh for all that my mind is not exploring while it’s wrestling this. Popular myth notwithstanding, minds cannot “multi-task.” We consider one topic at a time, and if it’s battle tactics, it’s not Shakespeare. True, foci can toggle rapidly, but flickering observation teaches no more than glances from a speeding train. The Nameless One filches my peace of mind – a crime punishable by invective, I guess.

As cow’s milk is flavored by their fodder (beware onion grass!), so is our mind’s product colored by its moment. This explains the haunting consistency of the Weltanschauung. Between contemporary makers, however disparate, quivers a kinship. Why are Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Richard Wagner, Felix Mendelssohn, and Henry Thoreau, to name a few, brothers beneath the skin? Please explain.

Whether or not the Nameless One is named in my pages, he hovers over every paragraph, for he is the pestilential air we breathe, our climate, our doom. He makes me a moralist willy-nilly, for Goodness is a life-preserver in the choking turpitude of the times. We must be Good not to be sucked into the vortex of cynicism, self-interest and hideousness that coils from the news. We cannot shrug – indifference betrays those we would protect. Not to shoulder our weapon, however feeble, is to lay it down.

Many pronounce this moment depressing. I used to. Now I find it invigorating. The Nameless One gives me important work, a mission that makes me a missionary, eager for dawn, when I can resume the fight. In America retirees are typically cashiered, consigned to the high shelf of impotence where they sweetly rot. Not today. This fight enlists all. Every vote, every life, every shout counts.

I hate the Nameless One with every fiber of my being – but thank him too. He makes me – and all of us – matter. SOS – Save Our State.