I want to be stopped at the border to my street. Altadena. After the fires.

The top most of the street is burned to the ground. It’s blackened debris. There have been looters in Altadena. Many have been caught and arrested.

Our street is amazing. We’ve formed a kind of Neighborhood Coalition, we meet on line from wherever we’re staying, report on progress, do research, recommend whatever’s needed, the roofer who does good work and doesn’t charge an arm and a leg, the lawyers who will take the case, the architects who work with builders for rebuilding, the deadlines coming up, the progress on when we can drink the water, who to call when you’re in despair.

That’s democracy at work. As it should be. We help each other. We’re together.

We chipped in for Private Security for a few weeks because gangs of looters were slinking through Altadena, even carrying metal detectors, stripping copper wire, hunting for jewelry and family heirlooms, anything they could steal and rip from our lives.

The sheriffs took over. They are heroic. They patrol night and day. In the early days after the fire when there was still burning, they put up barricades and wouldn’t let anybody in.

“But I live right there.”

“Nobody gets in. Isn’t safe.”

“But you can see my house from here. Look, here’s my driver’s license. That’s me, that’s my address.”

“Nobody.”

Then they let us in selectively. People need to see if they’re still alive. They left their lives there and want to see what’s left.

The sheriffs are friendly, efficient, mean business. They check details. I’ve seen them swarm.

Altadena is county, unincorporated, not a city with city police. So we have the County Sheriff with a local office, but we get patrols from all over the place. L. A. is a big county.

The sheriffs have common purpose. “Just doin’ our job.” They’re sorry for our loss. They could be us, and know it. We praise them. We offer them coffee.

They don’t just drive by. They park the patrol car cruiser, get out, walk the territory, around the house, check the doors to be sure they’re locked, shine light through the windows.

We see them, they see us. We keep an eye on each other. That’s good government, our tax dollars at work.

It hasn’t always been that way, still isn’t.

Long ago, years, I wrote a critical poem about Ronald Reagan and his government and sent it to the New Yorker. The editor sent it back with a note on why he rejected it. “It’s too ad hominem.” Of course it is! That’s the point!

Now we have government that doesn’t know what it’s doing. It’s tearing itself apart, thinks it’s saving money, doesn’t know what the money’s for, fires people for doing their job, then realizes the mistake and tries to hire them back. Understandably, they say, “Why should I work for you? You don’t respect me, you underpay, and YOU FIRED ME!”

Government. Government. Why can’t you be what you say you are?

You promise peace but threaten war.

You tout equality but make sure it doesn’t exist.

You preach without practicing.

You talk about lowering the cost while you raise it.

You make disappearing eggs the issue of the day, and when a few eggs roll back, who can afford them?

You hire and promote the incompetent and crazy because they’re your kind of people. You banish truth, but sometimes you’re right.

It’s like the surreal large loud arrogant woman a while back when people were running for President. She set up a booth on the fringe. She yelled, “RFK Junior!” but didn’t want to talk about it. She screamed, “If you don’t know, you’re ignorant!”

Obviously she didn’t know. Apparently the brain worm is contagious. As the poet says, “It flies in the night.” You can witness history before it happens. Now he’s in charge of our Health and Human Services.

I could go on and on like this, and I will. About borders, and crossing them. How we generate our problems by supporting southern dictators who drive their people to flee to us where we can exploit them to do the jobs we say we don’t want to do, do our labor and pick our crops, pay less than minimum, dirt cheap.

We put our own Americans out of work because they want what they deserve. We (I hate to say “we” when it doesn’t include me, preaching what we don’t practice) in this classless society where the low class working class is the underclass, we give them limited unemployment to shut them up, then throw them to the wolves.

Why can’t we see what’s right in front of us?

Because.

A lot of because. Because they’ve drugged us with addictions. Because they’ve taken law out of the law. Because they’ve kept us from knowing.

Because. Because.

That’s why I want to be stopped at the border, to know that government is still there doing its job, our tax dollars at work.