Make America Great Again.

Make America Great Again
—An American Bedtime Story

It’s 3:00 AM. The house is quiet. Empty.
Sleep escapes me.

I’m replaying a conversation I had with a friend—the kind where you don’t flinch because the person talking with you knows you. You feel the weight of the moment. Both of you.

We were talking about food.

Which sounds simple.
But it never is.

Not when you’ve known hunger.

The kind you can’t fix with a snack.
The kind that makes your bones feel hollow.
The kind that wraps around your childhood like a second skin—
and follows you into adulthood until you forget that comfort was ever something to expect.

I read the story—the one my friend shared. The one that caused disbelief.
Maybe you saw it.
Maybe you didn’t.
Not many people are talking about it. The news is sparse. I had to dig.

Maybe it got lost in the noise.

Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—
purchased to feed starving children in Afghanistan and Pakistan—
was incinerated.
Burned. On purpose. Because it expired.
Biscuits with a “best by” date.

A date that is not regulated.
Not standardized.
Just… stamped.

Do you know how these dates are mandated?

They’re not.
There is no federal regulation requiring manufacturers to apply food date labels on their products.
(One exception: infant formula.)

I could go into detail, but suffice it to say—
they are suggestions. Not laws.

And even so… they knew.
They knew at least ten weeks in advance that the food was nearing expiration.

Ten.
Enough time to move food across continents.

In contrast?
It took eight days to construct a prison before it housed its first detainee.

Look it up. Let that register.

The administration dismantled USAID.
Refused to distribute the food.
Then spent more money to destroy it.

$800,000 worth of biscuits.
$130,000 more to incinerate the biscuits.
Taxpayer money.
Gone.

Food that could’ve fed 1.5 million children for a week.
Gone.

I want you to see how hunger is never about lack.

There is always enough food in the world.
What there isn’t—
is mercy.

We spend billions building walls, prisons, and weapons.
But we won’t spend a fraction of that to feed children who did nothing wrong—
except to be born in a place of strife and greed.

I remember a time in my own life when the government’s decision
meant children like me were cut off from food.

They sold it as self-sufficiency.
But it was really about manipulation, power, control.

It always is, isn’t it?
Greed.

The co-ops were built in neighborhoods where my race made me a threat.

And if you think hunger doesn’t split a country clean down the middle,
you’ve never seen the face of a child who knows they don’t belong.

Hungry children don’t just die from lack of food.
They die because their bodies can’t fight infection.
They die because their bodies run out of ways to say no.
They die because there’s no one to wipe the snot from their face.
They die because of politics and policies.
They die because it’s more important to build prisons than feed them.

Maybe I’m naïve.
But I know what hunger feels like.
And I won’t pretend this is neutral—
because not choosing is still a choice.
So where is the line in the sand?
Where are the checks and balances?

The Democrats murmur their criticisms.
The Republicans roar their cruelty.
And between the two of them,
500 metric tons of food was incinerated.

Tell me again how this is the greatest country on Earth.
Because at 3 AM,
in the land of the free, and home of the brave,
I sit in the silence.
And the apathy.