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Hello, my beloved reader!

Remember a few weeks ago when I said I’d be pulling back to a bi-weekly posting schedule? Well, flush that old declaration down the tube. I suppose I underestimated the amount of time I’d have on my hands.

With this time, I’d like to show you something.

Let’s talk about this image.

Can you guess what it is? That’s right. It is a picture of America.

It is also a machine, full of buttons, knobs, screens, dials, hinges, wires, gears, claws, tubes, and electrons.

Machines are everywhere. We use them to tell us the time, cool our bedrooms, and liquify breakfast fruits. When compounded, they can predict whether there will be traffic, which other machines will have created.

In other words, they allow us to achieve our goals faster. Imagine life if washing machines weren’t invented. What would we even do? We’d just have to throw out our clothes every Sunday night, I suppose. And without cars? We would be unable to drift or purchase meals at the drive-thru.

America is also a machine. Our time is the input, and the betterment of society is the output (ideally). We are high-octane fuel for this gas-guzzling democracy.

One of the special ways that the American machine works is by minimizing dependency on other people. Here’s the harsh truth: other people are the slowest life forms in the known universe. So far, we’ve managed to work around them. We created copy machines to replace scribes, cars to replace carriage drivers, telephones to replace messengers, cell phones to replace telephone operators, television to replace theaters, drones to replace soldiers, security systems to replace guards, and Google Maps to replace OnStar.

The one exception is Family, of course. They’re the only ones allowed to observe our medical procedures, after all. We make all sorts of adjustments to our otherwise efficient operations to accommodate Family. Just look at our five-seater cars, which often only transport a single person between home and office five times a week.

Speaking of which, we’re taught to dream of the kind of office job we want to have from a young age. Throughout our youth, we’re trained to hone certain skills that can quantifiably increase our society’s standing. We learn to become “well-rounded.” We play sports, do theater, and conjugate foreign verbs. Many of us transcribe the merits of these skills onto a single-page employment ticket. As we approach adulthood, this ticket means more than anything, because when it’s approved by an employer, it grants us access to a dazzling office like below.

And of course, throughout this process, we must abide by certain rules. If you break a rule (or if you look like the kind of person that would) you will be passed into a submachine, sometimes permanently. This one has far fewer rules, most of which are unofficially decreed by its longstanding members, who whittle toothbrushes into weapons and wear lots of orange.

By the time we are employed, our place in the American machine is basically finalized. We executed all instructions and achieved the expected result of gainful employment. Congratulations! Our life goes on, and we continue to update our employment tickets, classify our tastes by genre, and accrue frequent flier miles.

Warning: I’m now going to talk to you about our political climate.

I’ll show you some byproducts of this American machine. You may have recently seen news reports of certain citizens of Michigan protesting the lockdown orders. They, along with some state governments, use the phrase “reopen America” as though our country is a computer application. They push to open businesses, which are supposedly the lifeblood of this nation.

I’ll show you yet another byproduct of the American machine: I momentarily agreed with these protestors. Not with their methods, but with their sentiment. “Of course!” I thought. “Let em go back to work! Let them earn money so that they can survive.” After all, the machine must keep chugging away! Let them risk their lives so they and their Families won’t die of hunger!

Of course, not all of them are uncooperative because of work—some flaunt their constitutional rights or miss their nail salons—but either way, my assumption was exposed. What a crazy idea, that one needs to work for their food during a pandemic! That working is more important than yours and others’ health! It’s like expecting a broke, bedridden, fever-struck teenager to pay for food.

Shouldn’t our leadership have a backup plan?

Isn’t the whole point of a government to protect us from scenarios like this?

And besides our machine’s shutdown exposing huge flaws in our government, the protests themselves show me the dark side of American ideals, such as Hard Work Yields Success and Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death, among others. People are protesting protective health measures, putting a world of others in real danger, simply because they believe that their values are under attack.

I try to remember that protestors, business owners, and lawmakers are terrified. They may hide it or not even know it, but it’s there. Noticing this similarity helps curb my anger. I try to remember this because besides staying home, that’s one important thing I can do.

The last thing I’ll say on this has to do with the longer term. America needs to be more than a machine. For balance, it needs to also be a garden, where our ideals and values grow and develop as much as our businesses do. It can be an orchestra of life, including the plants grown, the fruit borne, the children playing, the wildlife chirping, and the people tending it. It can be a place of play rather than just work.

How this looks specifically is up to us to decide. I like to imagine that we plant seeds of friendship, trust, and forgiveness that will patiently bloom into a new culture ripe with fruit. We can maybe start by understanding our opposition and recognizing that they’re not so different from us.

Them’s my thoughts on this whole ordeal. Having been born and raised in Michigan, I felt angry at and ashamed of the Lansing protests and needed to share what’s been on my mind. Thank you all again for reading my rant, and if you have any thoughts, disagreements, or ideas, feel free to comment! As always, links to my friends’ awesome work are below.

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My Friends Do Cool Things Too!

• Natasha, who inspired me to start this publication, writes for her own newsletter too wordy. Check out her latest post here!

• My friend Zander has recently produced a new track called Little Visitors. It follows the journey of alien space travelers searching for a planet on which they can rest. Hijinks ensue.