The Hellscape that is 21st Century America
It is an odd feeling to gaze up at the summer sky and not be greeted by a bright blue dome with a glowing golden orb cheerily laying claim to all that it surveys, but rather by a surreal smoky-red abomination with an orange-yellow splotch dominating its realm with tortured malevolence. Yet, that is precisely what I witnessed this day, as smoke from massive wildfires poured down across the border as if Canada was exhaling after taking a long, deep drag on a tar-filled cigarette. Welcome to the century of global secondhand smoke. We all tend to see the past through rose‑colored glasses, but I try to be objective about these things. And when I think back to my youth in the ’70s and ’80s, I can’t recall witnessing anything like this — not unless you count the day Washington state's Mount St. Helens blew with such force that its ash drifted all the way to New York, dusting cars and triggering a mini‑nuclear winter that made the following season measurably colder and snowie...