Power outage

The power went out a little before 8 p.m. and was back around 11:30. I had to work throughout, which was frustrating. I had to tether off Jill's phone for internet access, and my work laptop's battery is kind of iffy. But I managed and only had to log off about half an hour early before the battery died. The houses on the next street over have power. You can see the light from one in the background.

Pardon my rant.

It's Independence Day. I don't feel like I have much to celebrate, though. This is a racist country with a president who is emboldening the racists. They are violent, angry and ignorant. We have a justice system that unfairly targets people of color and penalizes them more harshly than white people and wealthy people. We don't have a social safety system.

You need a job for health insurance (and many minimum-wage jobs don't even offer that), and health insurance doesn't even cover everything. Visits to the doctor cost money despite insurance, drugs are costly, and there's no knowing what prices will be for care or if insurance will just drop you because you're too expensive.

The wealthy are making more money during this pandemic than before it while millions of people are jobless. The wealthy got tax cuts a few years ago, and now regular people like us actually pay a higher percentage of taxes than millionaires. Isn't that disgusting?

This pandemic isn't going away anytime soon as long as people refuse masks, don't practice social distancing, and go to businesses that reopened too soon. Other countries are getting it under control. Meanwhile, we're seeing 40,000 new cases a day in this country. All because someone wanted a haircut and a cowardly governor bowed to pressure. A million people are going to die.

How can someone be proud to be an American?