MY AMERICAN DREAM

By Stephan Helgesen

I awoke this morning drenched in my own perspiration. I had experienced a nightmare that placed me in a lawless country with no due process and no free speech and was ruled by an aging authoritarian President and an unelected bureaucracy. We were constantly fighting with each other about everything like when to take a human life in a mother’s womb. We couldn’t control our children anymore. Their teachers had taken over and would decide what was best for our sons and daughters and even if they could be called ‘sons’ and ‘daughters.’ 

We were unable to defend ourselves — either at our border which was now wide open — or from outside forces because we were too busy indoctrinating our soldiers about their pronouns and gender fluidity. After a cold shower, I changed into my clothes and then remembered the angst I felt in my dream as I walked down a busy downtown street. Bullets were flying around my head and I lost my balance several times trying to avoid homeless people, discarded syringes and human feces on the sidewalk. It was then that a car drove past me and four hooded youths emerged. Each carried a baseball bat and a gunny sack. They randomly swung their bats and knocked two passers-by out cold and then stepped over them, laughing as they moved steadily towards their goal…an upscale jewelry store.