When I first heard of the New York Times editorial by American fashion designer Heather Kaye, I thought it would be another looney liberal expression of a misguided desire for authoritarian government control. Her opinion piece is titled, “China Helped Raise My American Kids, and They Turned Out Fine.” I figured the title told me all I needed to know and nearly stopped reading. Then I recalled the old adage, never judge a book by its’ cover, or in this case an article by its title. After reading the piece, I still believe Kaye is misguided—but she made some good points.

The Public Theater of New York City recently decided that it would be a good idea to stage Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar” in a modern setting. In this version of the play the dictator, Julius Caesar, looks a lot like Donald Trump and, of course, in act three he’s murdered in order to save the country.

I continue to get emails from politicized organizations.

I’ve tried to use a website called Meetup to find writing groups in and around my area. It never worked well. I found networking with other authors led me to far more people than the website, but I never deleted my membership with Meetup.

Yesterday NaNoWriMo.org, the organization behind the event felt, compelled to send me an email in which they stated, “Because of this core organizational value, we join the many voices standing against the presidential executive order that bans refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.”

Why is National Novel Writing Month involving itself in issues of immigration, foreign policy, and national security?