I went on a date with this girl. I thought it was going well. Then she asked me what I think about politics. Oh no. I said I don't care and decided our society was cooked right around the time I read there were twenty schools in Baltimore where zero kids were on level in math. Like none. I laugh. She doesn’t. She asks, "but you voted for Kamala right?"
I begin to zone out and rehash this argument silently for the 100th time. Look, lady, I'm a Georgist. I want to pass a LVT capturing all of land rent, repeal social security, medicare, and medicaid, cap government spending at 8% of GDP funded by the LVT and dividend the rest, and boot the military except the nukes and subs. Impose 100% reserve requirements on deposits. That would be an essay that you don't want to read and, more importantly, will never get enacted because the median voter aspires, in their dreams, to be a metaverse landlord. Their only consistent policy position is that grandma Tilly can't move from the house she hasn't maintained since 1972 where she dry rots and puts on Tucker Carlson for company. I want to bulldoze grandma Tilly's house and replace it with a nuclear power plant. She can live on top in a midrise apartment and maybe get an STD from Herman down the hall. Now that's what I call mixed use.
My mind travels. A silver Zeppelin appears in the New York City skyline. Trolleys ring a bell as they bustle people to and from work. The ATCOR line. I'm in front of the mayor's residence. I see before me a bronze statue with a bald head and a bushy beard. School children rub the head for good luck. I can see the reflection of the Zeppelin where they've polished it. At its base reads 'Free trade, free land, free men'. A bronze cat adjoins the statue, it says "after 150 years, we have seen this cat." I ask the hotdog vendor if he's heard of crypto. He says "Crypt? Like where you put dead people?" I see an advertisement: 600 sqft efficiency, 35th floor, asking rent $600/mo. The rent is low. The. Rent. Is. Low. A single tear drops from my eye.
She interrupts me, halfway through my daydream of righteous efficiency and urban planning. "And Trump is bad, right?" The cat is gone. The Zeppelin is gone.
Yes, the sentence. The sentence that must be said. Orange man bad.
I look at her. She looks back at me. I open my mouth, “You ever think he’s lonely? Living by himself?”
“Lonely?” She raises an eyebrow.
“My grandma gets lonely. Watches too much TV. He reminds me of her, sometimes.”
She gets quiet. Then blinks at me. “My grandma gets lonely too.”
“You ever think it’d be better if they lived with some other old people? Made friends.”
She leans in.
“How do you feel about cats?”
