Gentrifiers focus on aesthetics, not people. Because people, to them, are aesthetics.

Americans should not fear riots. They should fear apathy. They should fear acquiescence. They should not fear each other. But it is understandable, now, that they do.

In the American media, white people debate whether race matters, rich people debate whether poverty matters, and men debate whether gender matters. People for whom these problems must matter -- for they structure the limitations of their lives -- are locked out of the discussion.

The nightmares I had been fending off had come home in the form of the Trump administration: a white supremacist kleptocracy linked to a transnational crime syndicate, using digital media to manipulate reality and destroy privacy, led by a sociopathic nuke-fetishist, backed by apocalyptic fanatics preying on the weakest and most vulnerable as feckless and complicit officials fail to protect them.

In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, privation should not come with the job description, and survival should not be an aspiration.