Slouching Toward the Capital

I was watching the impeachment trial this morning on YouTube, still in my sarung, when Nengah, the maid, suddenly motored into the driveway, conveying on her bike, as usual, her little boy, Ajus. I was surprised to see her and thought that perhaps she was stopping by to pick something up or do some brief errand. 

"What's up?" I asked, meeting her at the door. 

"Eh?"

"I mean ... do you need something? What's going on?"

"Nothing, Om. Just the usual." 

"But this is Wednesday."

"This is Thursday." 

"Hah? This is Thursday? What happened to Wednesday?"

"Wednesday happened yesterday," she said, giggling. 

Good grief. So anyway, I'm out at Starbucks now while Nengah does her usual house cleaning, listening to the trial with my earphones, and surprised to find myself unexpectedly in tears. 

I mean, it's not like I have been unaware of everything that happened on and up to January 6th. I guess it's just the relentless compilation of narrative and film, detailing one sad incident atop another. What in God's name has happened to my country? How have we allowed such a crass and clamorous violence to overcome us? And how have we come to the point where it all means nothing to more than half of our senate members? The case for Donald Trump's incitement of the capital riot is so terribly clear, so irrefutably present, and yet careless, bald-faced hypocrisy is slated to win the day. And that victory will constitute the greatest defeat in American history, and one from which we may never recover. 

It is depressing. It is heartbreaking. It is an irredeemable violation of truth and decency. Can we just move on? Of course we can, but only as a different country altogether, belonging now to the violent, undemocratic few.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and

everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the

worst 

Are full of passionate intensity.