In June, I interviewed Sarina Prabasi about her beautiful and profound memoir, Coffeehouse Resistance. An immigrant, activist, and executive at Water Aid, Prabasi offered invaluable insights on issues relating to Trump’s immigration policy, the follies of American exceptionalism, and the importance of activism.

More recently, I twice addressed the decay of democracy in the United States. In the first essay, I wrote about the provincialism of the American public renders most political debates absurd. For example, Democratic candidates for the presidency are made to answer questions about universal health care as if they advocating a wild proposal out of science fiction when, in reality, every other developed country has a universal health care program.

Next, I wrote about Trump’s racist and imbecilic statement against “the squad” in which he instructed them to go back to where they came from. Given that three of the four congresswomen are from the United States, and the fourth, has lived here since she was ten years old, Trump’s description of their native homes as “broken” has an ironic ring of truth to it. America, by most standards, looks like it is in a state of dysfunction and disrepair.