My Great Granddaughter Finds My Journal

It’s 2050 and my great granddaughter opens my journal to November 16, 2025:

Citizens of Gaza are trapped in water-soaked makeshift tents. Shivering children wade in mud up to their knees; their mothers wail, “This is worse than death.” There are few men left.

I’m consumed with worry that these children will freeze to death as Israel continues to deny aide trucks with new tents, food and medical supplies entry into Gaza. Will it ever end?

Gaza City residents struggling to withstand the heavy rains

Today Gaza seems to be forgotten. The world’s attention has shifted to an impending US invasion of Venezuela—to our extrajudicial killings where fisherman in their boats are blasted out of the water because a war-crazed president declares they’re drug smugglers.  The real goals are Venezuelan oil and next Cuba, a 68-year thorn in America’s side.

John Scholossberg, 32-year-old Kennedy family pretty boy, gets a full page spread in the New York Times following his announcement he’s running for Congress.  He has no political experience, achieving recognition as a social media influencer on TikTok and Instagram, where he’s been known to make snarky digs at public figures.

Here winter descends and low-income families choose between food and rent, amid suffocating energy costs. All while our military has a record budget of one trillion dollars. The defense industry thrives, and billionaires get richer.

People queuing for free food after their government benefits were stopped

The unhoused in my city of Portland, Maine community seem to multiply weekly, sleeping like animals in alleys and covered doorways. The prevailing addiction to fentanyl among the unhoused creates psychotic behavior where they scream at passerby. In response many avoid downtown Portland.

As businesses move to the burbs, empty storefronts create a ghost-town feeling. This once vibrant city is becoming a thing of the past.

Among the growing number of empty storefronts in downtown Portland

Washington’s former lip service to the looming dangers of global warming has disappeared. For the first time Washington has not sent a representative to the COP 30 global conference while adding damage to the environment by designating formerly protected areas for new oil extraction. 

Homeland Security and ICE have become a Nazi-style private army, Hooded, fully armed and largely untrained ICE agents terrorize migrant neighborhoods, arresting those who appear Hispanic or have dark skin.  ICE seems hell bent on meeting Stephen Miller’s mandate: arrest 3000 illegals a day,

ICE agents are known for using excessive force

Racism surges. The administration’s seeming indiscriminate firing of top military brass and federal employees who are black goes unchecked. Our ancient and deep racial divide is a dominant force once again. 

Attacks on women derail the progress women have made over a century, while airhead bimbos are given key positions in the government and dominate our TV screens.

Public schools and private universities succumb to government bullying and penalize those for simply mentioning basic rights for Palestine or for transgendered individuals, or those who encourage critical thinking or support freedom of speech. Anything that challenges the narrative of white males and “America First”.

Mark Bray, Rutgers Prof, who moved to Spain with his young family after receiving death threats for his book on the history of Antifascism

Many among the well-off chose to look away, isolating themselves in their mansions in gated communities and traveling worldwide on their private jets. We are living in a new Gilded Age.

Trump’s Great Gatsby party at Mar-a-Lago last month

I imagine my great granddaughter, reading my journal and comparing my world to the one she occupies, where clean air and drinking water, fresh fruit, and vegetables are at a premium. She shares a cramped living space with four others in a run-down building in a gloomy neighborhood of decaying buildings.

I imagine her studying the photos tucked inside my journal, and her jaw dropping at images of the beautiful Maine coast, where pristine beaches are a thing of the past, as is the variety of flowers in my garden.

She might share my journal and photos with friends. Perhaps they will respond, “Why didn’t anyone try to stop it?”