August - The Silly Season, with Fascists Added

As August sets in, who wants to do any useful work? Here, "retired," it is all play (editing poetry books, creating music), but even so, I know that academic people and publishers to whom I have written and await word from, are likely at their beach or mountain houses, or traipsing through museums and sipping absinthe of an evening.
If the Republic were not in mortal peril, I could switch off and spend the "silly season" watching old movies and TV shows and drinking iced tea.
But I can't.
I don't know what's coming next, and if we don't watch out, people like me will find men in brown shirts cutting my internet cable and following me around. It will not be safe to walk past alleys.
I will have to resume plans to join the resistance, or to slip across the border, or find a commune somewhere in the deep woods.
I may have to re-learn how to build cannons.
I will have to know how many days I could live with the food in my pantry.
I will have to check in again with those people I know would hide me, and whom I would help if they were on the run and needed to establish a new identity.
I am far from the rising coastal waters, but not far from armies of Bible-waving fools.
"The silly season" is an old newspaper term to describe the nutcase stories that journalists used to use as fillers in August, when there was a shortage of hard news, and the thermometer seemed to provoke the crazies with conspiracy theories to come out from their basements. Higher temperatures also meant more crimes of passion. Plus a host of stories about people being eaten by sharks and alligators. Now the White House fills the Silly Season with endless headlines.
So, have your August fun, folks, but keep the computer on and pay attention.