Our president looks like a Christmas ham and talks like Chucky. We're America, bitch.

Maybe, according to my insula, this is the way things are these days in America: that for some of us, the world stopped making sense. Anything can happen. Here can be there, then can be now, up can be down, truth can be lies. Everything's slip-sliding around and there's nothing to hold on to. The whole thing has come apart at the seams.

America, what happened to your optimism, your new frontiers, your simple Rockwell dreams? I'm plunging into your night, America, pushing myself deep into your heart like a knife, but the blade of my weapon is hope.

It was almost a relief to arrive in the middle of other people's crises and leave the crisis of America behind. At home he had stopped listening to the news and avoided social media to shut out the daily nonsense as much as he could. He had his book to write, and this private crisis to deal with, the crisis of Sister, and that was all he could handle right now. The apocalypse of the West would just have to wait in line.