Joe Biden Is Going to Make America Great

It’s 7:30 in the morning, or fifteen minutes after I’ve left the house, the absolute nadir of my morning commute. I’m stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic along the residential thoroughfare, my jaw flexing and hands squeezing the steering wheel, as there are too many parents endeavoring to drop their young children off at the neighborhood school. And all of this takes place before I merge onto interstate seventy, where the probability of another traffic jam is more than fifty percent. But at least there is constant forward momentum along the interstate, even if it is gradual and maddening. Residential traffic jams in school zones were particularly infuriating and disturbing, exercises that test the limits of my patience.

“Ah!” I exclaimed one morning in September. “When did all of these freaking people move into the neighborhood and procreate. You’re all just getting in my way. I wish you would disappear from the road on August through May. Please make my life easier by just going away!”

Five months later, my wish was granted.

A novel coronavirus pandemic swept through the country, causing debilitating sickness, excruciating death, and misery. State and local municipalities were forced to shut down, bars and restaurants were shuttered, gyms were emptied, jobs were lost, grocery shelves were bare, and the schools were closed…