Come Together

 I was watching yesterday a brief news conference held by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on a New York City street when a middle-aged woman stepped into the picture and began ranting about God knows what. The usual crap, you know? Something about Schumer being a liar and shameful and insulting the cult leader and blah, blah, blah. Reporters, cameramen, and Schumer stood back and silently watched, waiting for her to tire and desist, the way one tends to do when having to interact with any random lunatic on the street. I don't know how the woman was eventually removed, or indeed whether she merely ran out of rant, as the newscast broke away to cover other stories during the interruption. 

And it struck me that, if nothing else, this woman's raw anger alone mirrored the intensity of my own, and of so many others, at deluded people like her, at the foolish conspiracy theories and the QAnon imbecility, at the treachery of our soon-to-be irrelevant president, at the violence visited upon our nation's capital and our representatives and on the officers who sought to protect them. At the shame visited upon our nation. I mean, I am outraged by their outrage! Kudos to Schumer, I guess, for not taking this woman by the collar and trying to shake some sense into her. 

How has it happened that outrage has lost its integrity, its center? Who are these people who would be outraged not by a president who has lied and fumed and foamed and finally incited white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, thugs, killers, and just plain run-of-the-mill morons to carry out an insurrection, but by the honorable and needful intent to correct and penalize such behavior? To me, this is simply astounding and quite completely inscrutable. 

Incalcitrant Republican congressmen and women speak now about the need to "come together". Nothing much to see here. Move on. Heal. And by all means, look the other way. 

Right. Well, I reckon that before 'coming together', they themselves are going to need to 'get it together'!