This Is America Today

Last night in Manhattan a problem at a ConEdison substation winked out the power for about 73,000 customers from 72nd Street to the West 40s, and from Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River.

This included Carnegie Hall and Broadway - where the night's performances had to be cancelled.

So this happened:

A power outage in New York, but it couldn’t stop the Millennial Choirs and Orchestras, creating a makeshift stage right outside Carnegie Hall. #nycblackout pic.twitter.com/fPQJzvTS1t

— Ravi Agrawal (@RaviReports) July 14, 2019

And this:

Impromptu performance #broadwayblackout @wecomefromaway pic.twitter.com/PfHYZeFJ6v

— Chad Kimball (@chadkimball1) July 14, 2019

And this:

When there’s a blackout at @hadestown we take the party outside! #oohitsablackout pic.twitter.com/DCOwQWqRaq

— Kimberly Marable (@misskimizzo) July 14, 2019

And this:

The @WaitressMusical cast is prepared to entertain, power or not! @SaraBareilles #broadway #blackoutnyc pic.twitter.com/rkTYpJ2N8h

— Erich Bergen (@erichbergen) July 14, 2019

But let's refrain from too much self-back patting about how great America is because this, too, is America these days:

New video shows severe overcrowding of men in cages at Texas detainment facility during VP Pence's visit Friday.

A group of men detained behind chain link fencing shouted to news cameras, "No shower, no shower!" https://t.co/iysmT8IUE1 pic.twitter.com/VF8kUAy94K

— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 13, 2019

In an interview about what he saw in the camps, Trump's Vice-President said:

I think what we saw today was a very fair representation of how families are being treated

But you'll note in the video that it's all men - where are the women and children?  As one twitter writer wrote, someone should remind the VP that all those men were once fetuses.

Then there's this:

My wife was a flight attendant and I was an Army officer in Atlanta in the late 90’s. I used to drop my kids off at a daycare that wasn’t bad and had cameras I could watch online. My daughter was maybe 3 or 4. I started noticing her spirit fading. pic.twitter.com/A37BpjIids

— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) July 13, 2019

Read it. Read it all.

This is America.