Doing my part for freedom, quotas, and beer money. Cleetus, a new ICE agent, writes a darkly satirical letter to his mom about quotas, family separations, and the bureaucratic 'brilliance' of his new patriotic job.

Proof that we can do anything, so long as we’re in a metal death machine and completely zoned out

Sitting on a balcony high above the 405 when something clicked. I was at that hotel off Sunset that looks like a grain elevator with windows. Used to be an old Holiday Inn. Now it’s $450 a night for a view of brake lights.

Anyway, what clicked was, while I was watching traffic, I thought about all the people travelling on the freeway. Thousands of metal death machines hurtling along at ridiculous speeds.

Everyone driving had their own agenda. Some were focused on what they were doing, obviously. Others were totally distracted. They had to be. Most of us are.

Knowing humans the way I do, you’d think it’d be a war zone. Maniacs on all sides doing 80. Cars should be skidding and swerving. Crossing lanes and running into walls. Drivers would race each other and knock those in the way off the road. People screaming, fire everywhere. Picture Mad Max with better air conditioning.

I mean, come on. These are the same people who lose their minds if you take too long at the ATM. They’ll scream at a McDonalds employee because they get shorted one fucking chicken nugget. They’ll fight over a parking spot like it’s the last lifeboat on the Titanic.

But put them on the freeway? Suddenly we’re all in a harmonious flow. Like synchronized swimmers in bumper-to-bumper hell. There was something orderly.

We, collectively, can go on autopilot. You get in the car, you zone out, you arrive at your destination, and you have a zero recollection of the journey.

You can listen to a podcast and not remember most of it. Take a phone call? Can’t recall what you talked about. If you have a passenger you both could have a conversation and arrive at your destination before you know it. It’s like time travel.

What is this sorcery? We’re in this trance. One collective trance. That’s what it is. We’re all plugged into the same current. You slow down; I slow down. You speed up; I speed up.

And the second we exit? Boom. Trance shattered. The guy who politely merged? Now he’s yelling at no one in particular because a parking spot is too far from the entrance. The lady who pumped the brakes to keep one car length separation for twenty miles? She’s now in line at Whole Foods arguing that her kale hasn’t been artisanally sprayed enough.

We can cooperate at death-defying speeds, but we can’t share an elevator without someone pressing every button just to be a jerk.

I’m sitting there on the balcony, staring at this miracle of human behavior, and all I can think is this is the only place left where society still works. The freeway. Up on the 8th floor it’s almost peaceful. Down there? It’s a potential rolling disaster accompanied by radio stations.

The freeway keeps us moving just long enough to go back to hating each other properly.

I go inside, slam the sliding door. The hum fades. And just like that, I’m annoyed at the fucking world again.

Pretty neat trick, huh? We’re all just travelling along mostly smoothly. How is that? We’re at each other’s throats usually. But, on the freeway, we’re all like one energy. The energetic highway. Like your chakra system with GPS.

How are we not all dead?What a system. What a beautiful, catatonic system.

The morning of the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, the President of the United States woke up surrounded by gold-plated everything at the White House. He excitedly kicked off his covers and checked his phone.

An icy chill ran through him when he read the text. Some unassuming diplomat from a country most people had forgotten about had been awarded the Peace Prize by the Nobel Committee. Not to him, the leader of the free world, whose many posts about how he deserved the prize resulted in a nasty case of strained thumbs.

“Outrageous!” He said to his gold-framed mirror.