Video evidence is everywhere. 

Facebook. X. Especially X. Instagram. TikTok. 

I’ve even seen evidence on Truth Social, a Trumpian fountain of irreconcilable conflict between reality and fantasy. 

You know things are horrible when the liars are lying about lying.

The videos show that Americans hate each other so much that their faces contort as short-circuiting anger grips their hearts in headlocks. 

If someone could put their heart in a headlock, the videos are the evidence. 

Mobs of black, white, and brown teenage girls and boys, it doesn’t matter, kick each other’s asses until someone can’t get up anymore. 

Americans whom we label Karen and Ken, with spittle running down their chins onto their polyester rayon shirts and sweaters that they bought at their local Kroger or Marshalls, and swearing that they are the guides to the truth and that I am in the way. 

Or the traffic stop that turns deadly because one side is talking about power while the other party is just trying to get home. 

“What we’ve got here is… failure to communicate. Some men you can’t reach.” Strother Martin as Captain in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke.

I love that movie. 

It’s terrible out here. You better believe it.

I haven’t touched the subject of politics, and I’m already disheartened that America doesn’t seem to have learned anything from its history. The struggle over who this country belongs to is insane. 

How do we define a nation? 

Are you talking about land? Or institutions? Or history? 

Or is it the people?

It’s not like there’s a deed somewhere with my name or yours. 

All I know is that something terrible is happening inside that debate. 

The idea of a United States of America, a people unified behind a concept of liberty and justice for all, all those lost words that have become meaningless to Americans or to those who will die trying to become Americans.

There is a war going on. 

People are screaming at each other over stupid shit. 

Meanness has replaced kindness. 

Empathy has been replaced by antipathy. 

Threats against people are commonplace. 

A gun, a knife, and fists are now the preferred means of communication. 

Both extreme ends of the political spectrum are gearing up for battle, and many of us are left wondering, “Should I buy a gun or move?” 

Move where?

Because we all suspect the real civil war is coming, and it isn’t going to be pretty.

The cold civil war began with Obama's election.

First, I can’t afford a gun, except maybe a Nerf Gun. 

I may want to kill some people sometimes, but I know I don’t have the cojones to pull a trigger (I’m a lover, not a fighter) or the readiness for the ugly truth that it wouldn’t make much of a difference. 

Somewhere in this country (Texas, Florida), the next generations of Americans are being taught a 1950 version of American History where everyone knew their place. 

Can we, like, forget those pesky reminders of class, race, and gender warfare and the laws that came out of those battles?

Yeah, some people would rather burn our memories so we don’t remember them, and replace them with a more tranquil picture of patriotic Americans with their red, white, and blue flags, AR-15s, a mask of revenge, and an I don’t give a fuck snarl that is now a license to intimidate, whether you like it or not.

2026 and the next election are almost here, and I am terrified that it will turn ugly.

Ya’ think? 

On one side, we have a President and his political party that are doing everything under the sun to stop the other political party from voting, even if it means calling up the army, the National Guard, and ICE to stop them from voting. 

On the other hand, we have a political party that couldn’t find its cojones in broad daylight, even with a magnifying glass and a huge spotlight. 

Sad.

I’ve witnessed a lot of American history and hysteria in my seventy-seven years. It’s not that I’ve understood everything I’ve seen, but I suspected back then, even as a ten-year-old in 1958 in the South Bronx, that something was very wrong with America. 

All that talk about the Pledge of Allegiance, the Star-Spangled Banner, and that all men are created equal didn't mean it applied to everyone, only to white people, preferably men. 

Then I was told that certain people had to earn their freedom, not yet, but soon, and that they wouldn’t know what to do with it if they had it. 

Freedom is earned, not given for free (What?).

I wondered who they were referring to. 

Not me. I was born American, and I swore I was free. 

Then, three years later, I discovered in an all-white school that they weren’t talking about me either as they shouted racial insults and thought it was cute to call me Pancho.

We are broken. 

And I don’t know how to fix ourselves. 

I don’t think you can pass a law to heal us, or start all over and try again, or ignore it and go about your business, hoping someone comes up with a fix. 

I worry about the America my granddaughter will encounter as she gets older in ten, twenty, or even thirty years, when we’re supposed to become a nation of people of color in the majority. 

All I could hope for is that we’re lucky enough to get there alive and well. 

It's just that right now, it doesn’t look good from here in 2026.