I attended an event in midtown by Trump Plaza in midtown over the weekend. A friend who is very liberal said how uncomfortable the space made her feel. She also mentioned how she just got back from Mexico and planned to return there, as well as New Orleans, in the next few months.

I didn’t point out to her how much of the cost of her plane tickets is funding the lobbyists and industries that are driving the US government she is so uncomfortable with. I did start to speculate if there were places that made me uncomfortable. I thought about airports. It hit me that I’ve only been inside an airport once in the past ten years. A few years ago I met a friend arriving at JFK and I didn’t like the experience. When you don’t fly and do know the harm they cause the world, as a major contributor to death and suffering on a scale much greater than US slavery or the Holocaust, airports are ghastly.

Also, if you value family, human culture, nature, and small-town America airports utterly steamroll these things. Airplanes do to nations what cars do to cities. The effect of flying on families is similar to the effect of fentanyl on families.

I thought ten years since I remember I last flew in 2016. Then the next day my calendar showed the anniversary of my last flight was March 23.

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