The World Cup fans falling in love with America aren’t in the places MAGA controls ... they’re in New York, LA, Seattle. Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston, the cities Republicans have spent a decade calling dangerous, godless hellholes that apparently the entire world wants to visit.
Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named.
The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river.
The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn.
Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound.
"Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever.
It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin.
"Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather.
I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet.
In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair.
And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge.
You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain.
The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste.
I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind.
Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again.
"Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up.
Discipline is a journey.
Imagine being a bar owner inside this zone near MSG. You'd prepared to have maybe the highest revenue night in this history of your bar.
Now you'll make nothing thanks to Trump.
If you’re not from #washingtondc, I’m sorry this is how we’re welcoming you into our city. @wmataGM usually does a great job and I couldn’t be more proud of him. This fix doesn’t cut it, which is why I want to see a selfie that he’s experienced it himself.
Can we get a selfie of @wmataGM on the transfer bus between DCA & pentagon city? I’m shocked he approved this plan; more shocked about the experience. People piled on top of each other on a smelly bus after baking in the sun waiting for the next shuttle. @wmata - please do better
A civilian was hit and a man is dead.
We need better gun control, better access to mental health assistance, and a government that cares for its people.
The sun hits the Earth with 10,000 times more energy than we use.
Every. Single. Day.
We're not running out of power.
We're just stuck using the wrong kind-because billionaires don't own sunlight.
If capitalism is so great, why do corporations need so many tax breaks, subsidies, exemptions, grants, legal protections, bailouts, and trade protections?
When citizens need these things, why is it socialism?