Driving through Heater, Arizona with Sheriff Pierce

Now, as we drove by, the burned-out store stood for me as an emblem of what had happened to this town and this country. With our communities atomized by corporations and privatization, we were unable to survive the inevitable endgame of consumer culture and the primacy of profit over all else. In the resulting collapse, isolated by the erosion of infrastructure and the dismantling of our communities, unable to understand what was happening due to the constant bombardment of media disinformation, we fell on each other. In our fear, our desperation and our anger, we turned on our neighbors, wherever they looked different from ourselves, while those who were responsible for steering us down this path—those who reaped the profits—lived in comfort many miles away, protected from the misery and the desperation.

Murderer’s Sky; Book 1 of Under Shattered Skies ~ kindle ~ paperback