My Sunday Feeling

Sometimes words are inadequate.  Or at least they are in the hands of someone as unskilled as me.  

What a terrible week for institutional America.  Or what is left of it.  

I'm just kind of numb.  

M said that she just wants to gather her family in and protect it.  She graciously includes me in that number.  But we both know she can't do that.  We know we have to go out into the world.  

But what a world.  

The Presidential election has already worn me out.  And it is not yet August.  The presumptive nominee of the Republican party is a xenophobic narcissist par excellence who consorted with mob types in his real estate career.  He is easily the least qualified candidate for the Presidency since-I dunno-I'm thinking-I dunno.  Hellfire.  Even Aaron Burr had qualifications. And now what the R's refer to still with a straight face as the "Party of Lincoln" even as their presumptive standard bearer is the second coming of IL Duce.  

On the other side of the coin, Hillary and her omnipresent shadow Bill, can't keep from shooting themselves in the feet when they could be coasting to the finish line.  My original plan a couple of days ago was to give a lawyerly explanation of why there was no criminal case against Hillary.  As in nada.  Zero.  Not from the criminal side.  Not from the Constitutional side.  Complete probable loser from the prosecution trial prep side of it.  

But that would have resulted in the usual Facebook explosion.  And I don't care enough about somebody who can't seem to stay out of her own way at times to waste time defending her.  Not that I would be defending her.  I would just be explaining things.

But then again, facts don't matter.  


Really.  Facts don't matter.  Not in a world where some folks consider it unfairly divisive to consider that a disproportionate number of black folks seem to get whacked during routine traffic stops.  Not when a Trump billboard around Morgan says that "The Only Reason That Hillary Isn't In Prison Is Because She Is A Female Democrat."  

Really?  That's what politics have dumbed down to?  

And then in Dallas cops, providing security for a peaceful march protesting the aforementioned, get gunned down by an African-American Army vet trained in the use of a tactical weapon who wanted to kill white cops.  Parse that sentence if you will. Oh. And get this.  There just happened to be an African-American guy wearing camo in the vicinity who was openly and legally carrying an AR-15.    Which in Texas you can do.  Talk about timing.  He immediately became a suspect.  As the kids say, "Yeah, right?"

Yeah, no.  This idiot, who is lucky that he wasn't blown into next January, is talking about suing for defamation.  Of course he is.  Is this a great country or what?

The police eventually sent a robot armed with a bomb to explode in the area in a parking garage in which the shooter had barricaded himself.  

Predictably, there was stuff on FB about how this was excessive force.

Like hell it was.  The line between law enforcement and war got really thin at that point.  I'm good with the resolution.  Then again I'm a law enforcement person.  I'm also widely considered to be what passes for a "liberal." I see no contradiction. Why is everything a zero-sum game?

I'll tell you why.  Because you don't have to think when you reduce the world to black and white. 

M is a woman who in the words of a friend upon meeting her said she "radiates peace." M's immediate reaction to all of this madness is to express a desire to, as I said, gather us all unto herself.  

But she is a Deacon in the One True Universal and Apostolic United Methodist Church. She knows the world must be confronted.  Me too.  We just confront it in different ways.  

But for now, with all of this sadness.  With all of this lunacy on the Internet passing for journalism.  With all these experts in the criminal law popping off on Facebook. 

I'm just numb.  

So I'm good with M pulling me and her kids within the arc of her long arms.  

I'm lucky.  It passes for safe.  It will do for awhile.