Rage And Anguish

 I'm angry.

It often appears a constant in my life now, but the events of July 13th, 2024 have catalyzed it in a way that leads almost to despair.

Our country is fallen, that much has been clear in the last decade. A six-decade plan by the Republican Party to cede control of the nation to White Christian Fascism continues apace and now we are in a political and ideological battle for our existence as a nation. Just shy of 250 years since the Declaration of Independence said we chose to be free to live our lives as we see fit, we are on the precipice of an authoritarian abyss.

Fifty years ago, as a small child, I watched the Watergate hearings on TV. I couldn't understand the balance of what was being discussed, but I knew enough to know it was serious, because all the other TV shows were preempted for it. The nation was being forced to watch as a painful reckoning was begun. Years later, a lot of what I'd seen and heard made more sense, once I had a better idea of how our government worked.

Flash forward fifty years and the world of then seems but a fairy story, a distant and dim memory closer to the Dark Ages than the 21st Century. We have fallen that far.

Even the simplest mind should be able to make a decision based on the simplest of inputs. There are two men running for the office of the President. One is the President, who has done a stellar job recovering our country from the disaster of the Covid-19 Pandemic; one if the man who created the disaster that was the pandemic. One is an old, articulate man who sometimes stumbles over his words; the other is an old, inarticulate man who routinely confuses people's names and blurts out word salad instead of coherent thoughts. One man had some secret materials in a box and promptly returned them; the other man had boxes and boxes filled with secret material and is still trying to prevent people from taking them away and putting him in jail for an offense many others have been jailed for. One man is capable; the other man is a lousy businessman and convicted criminal.

And yet... the streak of long-simmering anger that has festered in our nation, and erupted like a pustule when Donald Trump rode down that escalator, forces us to confront that this election may be closer than we think, though the data suggests that he is in for an even worse drubbing in this next election, one he will undoubtedly contest and his rabid, sycophantic followers will proclaim fraudulent in his defense, before finally being proved wrong yet again.

Then July 13th happened.

Someone shot at Trump. He was grazed. He is fine. Far from being the "heroic" candidate, he was barely scratched. This was not Ronald Reagan and James Brady being punctured by a dozen bullets. This was not the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Robert F. Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln. It was not even, plausibly, like the attempt on Franklin Roosevelt, or Teddy Roosevelt, who had a bullet in him but stayed and finished a political speech before being whisked off. I cannot speak to the shooter's motives, but they have not done us any favors in painting Trump with a similar brush, making him look less like a Degas and more like a child's finger painting, but nonetheless giving him the "cachet" of having been shot at.

Yesterday catalyzed in me the anger I'd been carrying, that we are having to put up with all this nonsense. That anger was transformed by this moment into anguish. Anguish, that we are not beyond political violence in the 21st Century. Anguish, that society is crumbling inexorably around me, and my family, and I don't know how to stop it. Anguish, that I, as a reformed Catholic, adherent to the words of Jesus, could fall into a miasma of conspiracy (staged?), disingenuous politicking, and worst of all, barely concealed disappointment (missed?) at the attempt. I disgusted myself. I put down my phone, took up my dinner, and went outside to sit in the relative quiet.

I'm still angry, not in the way I was, but mad, now, at myself. That I could allow myself to fall into the sinkhole that is the province of the "Make America Great Again"" crowd. That my dislike and demonization of the man would lead to the untoward thoughts in my head, that I will not repeat here, but which many of you can guess. I'm angry that I've been lowered to the level of a savage animal, seeking to rend flesh from the bones of my adversary. I'm angry that my intellect has been infected by a primal desire to harm. All that anger is now anguish, for what I've allowed myself to become, how sucked into this process I've allowed myself to be. So great is the resolve to see him pay a price, that I am reduced to one of the shouting hordes in the Colosseum, delighting in the combat of men to the death.

All roads lead to Rome," the ancient saying goes. Perhaps they knew more than we give them credit for.