"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -- Aldous Huxley

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

 "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

 "People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls." -- Carl Jung 

                  Confession: I’ve been muting my moans about America because the news is too bad. 

                  Partly this is a coping strategy. "Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things,” observed Pascal long ago.

                  Panic is a charitable explanation which, while true enough, masks a less pardonable motivation. I want to please you – and there is nothing pleasant about howling. Instead of inviting Jeremiah or Cassandra over for a jaw, we unsubscribe.

                  “Human kind,” said T.S. Eliot, “cannot bear very much reality.” When dread overwhelms us, we look away, say it ain’t so, take comfort from false analogies. It was always thus, we shrug, citing the corruption of the Grant and Harding administrations; politicians will be politicians and boys will be boys.

                  Or we pull back our cameras to a wider historical perspective, which makes today’s actors look insectile and harmless. Didn’t the Roman empire survive Caligula and Nero by several centuries?

                  Or we comfort ourselves with the prospect of better days ahead. I find myself discounting analysts who predict the elections in November will be close. It’s going to be a blowout, I insist, and retribution will commence! I almost revel at the restoration of decency and truth.

                  Any of these defensive strategies is defensible and makes the news hurt less. The future is impossible to foresee and we must live to fight another day, right? Yet isn’t evasion dishonesty? And isn’t truth-telling my schtick? Though I may clown I am not a clown. My mission, with these daily words, is to do justice to my time. And because I am timid and avid for your regard, I’m avoiding venting my dread. The climate in my mind is direr than my words on the page.

                  I compose this mea culpa on a weekend I wish I was celebrating my beloved nation’s semiquincentennial (say that three times fast). But I fear the patient is dying. In the past few days we’ve learned our President has earned a mere two billion during his first year on the job, that he turned our national birthday party into a cynical grift (Watch Rep. Jared Huffman’s unraveling of the crime, if you can stand it). We witness what a mess he’s made of our pretty pristine Capital. We listen to his incessant lies, slanders, and blather. We observe the Supreme Court reinforcing his virulent authority. And I am tempted to present a pleasant poem? 

                  We must not look away. Things may not be as bad as they appear – but don’t you believe they’re worse? For a decade I’ve been yammering about the evil of this man, yet my horror underestimated the threat. None of us alone has the power to remove him, but together we can – or perish in the attempt.

                  Happy Fourth.