America: Where Your Only Choices Are Your Worst Ones

There is no question that I will vote for Hillary, but it should be noted that she is the second most unpopular major party nominee in history, next to the Donald. This is the post-new-nuAmerican standard: No longer is it the most popular person who wins the day; it’s either the most reviled or the second least popular (which, if you think about it, might be worse than having the distinction of being the ipso facto “most disliked”).

What does this say about us? As the Donald parades his “Let’s Make America Great Again” campaign, what he’s really saying is “Let’s Make America Hate Again”: Hate immigrants, hate other countries, hate our differences, hate each other, hate our leaders (who we vote into office)… Hate!

We used to dislike the “unpopular” ones, rightly or wrongly; now we hate everyone and are about to raise the worst among us to the highest office.

The Rare Rejection Correction

It's 3:01 a.m. and I'm still at it:

I've been receiving rejection letters for about 30 years now. Journals, magazines, galleries, book publishers, festivals -- "Not right," "No thank you," "Doesn't fit," "Almost," "Huh?"... every kind of rejection possible, some crushing. I have no idea what my success to failure rate is -- as a teenager, I started burning my "Declined" notices; now I immediately, permanently delete them -- but it has been a life of rejections (even more than art). Every now and again, however, I receive a note and think to myself, "That's gotta be a mistake," and I may even follow up with a doe-eyed, "Are you sure?" letter. If I ever field a response it's usually, "Oh, we're sure." But once a decade (for a grand total of three times ever) I receive a follow-up that all but says, "We made a mistake. Congratulations." Sure, Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum,... but these fortune changes seem to come from a wholly divine place. Shifts happen. Who am I to question Apollo, Xochipilli, Saraswati, and/or Pan?