A violent country gets a violent holiday. — It happened on the Fourth of July. A man somewhere between 18 and 20 years old climbed up onto a roof with an assault rifle. Then he opened fire on a parade. His bullets went into dozens of people, killing six of them. Police call it “a random act of…

Welcome to the land of structural violence. — Here we go again, again. Monkeypox cases have doubled or tripled recently, depending on what parts of the globe you’re looking at. The U.S. is now looking at more than 400 infections across at least 30 states, probably a vast undercount. Meanwhile, our public health departments are doing almost nothing…

Let the shame sink in. — She’s 10 years old. A man raped her, and now she can’t get an abortion in her own state. Soon, she won’t be able to get one in neighboring states, either. The majority of Republican politicians in this country want to pass laws to prevent her from getting one anywhere…

They’re the assets of the future. — We’re running out of water. It barely rains in the southwest anymore. Drought has descended on the breadbasket, too. States like Kansas could lose a third of their wheat harvest this year. It’s going to cost farmers there $1 billion. This is one of those cascading problems. Drought doesn’t just…

We only have poor choices. — It’s perfect. I’m not sure what else to say about a president trying to choke the head of his own secret service and commandeer his vehicle while shouting, “I’m the fucking president!” I’m not shocked he knew protestors were showing up to his rally-turned-riot with assault weapons. “They’re not here…

It was inevitable — The man didn’t like his sandwich. There was too much mayonnaise. So he pulled out his handgun, and he shot the two girls who made it. He killed one of them and put the other in critical condition. Her five-year-old saw everything. All this went down at a Subway, about…

It’s your turn. — I remember the day when a student showed me a chain email calling Barack Obama a secret Muslim terrorist. She believed every word. We spent four months talking about critical thinking and information literacy. By the end of the semester, she was more convinced than before that our president was…

We’re getting the economy we deserve. — George W. Bush walked into an Omaha diner. He struck up a conversation with a waitress raising three children by herself. “You work three jobs?” he said. Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.” You hear this kind of thing a lot from rich…

We never learn. — We’re really going to do this again, aren’t we? When I first started talking about monkeypox, miracle mongers laughed it off. “There’s only one case in the U.S.,” they said. They gave me another round of lectures about panicking, explaining how mild the disease is. Now a few weeks later…