Artie had watched as the new president sneeringly humiliated the leader of Ukraine in the Oval Office. He listened with horror as the man said he would like to make Gaza “the new French Riviera.” He watched as the president deported people to foreign prisons and arrested students who had spoken out against the war in Gaza, students who could have been Artie’s a few years earlier, just taken off the streets. He watched as the president hung an enormous billowing photo of himself outside the Department of Agriculture building, and as he gave a military parade on his birthday. He watched as a prison was opened in Florida, “Alligator Alcatraz,” where people were held in cages and the mosquitoes were so bad that some of the guards quit. He watched as people in Gaza starved and the United States did nothing about it. Every day brought something new. On and on it went. Artie watched all these things, and he slowly understood that what he had felt the day of the election was true: His country was committing suicide. The Things We Never Say

Yes. If a nation (fucker[s] in charge) collapses, an indivual cannot just opt out. God knows I tried like hell. I could not keep the gun out of my mouth. Not alone.