“If Hitler invaded Hell I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” — Churchill

                  I’m a patriot. I eagerly scroll the headlines for news of America’s disasters. Am I still a patriot?

                  America, by my lights, has gone rogue. My opposition to our ruling regime is existential, not political. I want us to crash vividly enough to convince my fellow citizens we’re headed wrong, wholly wrong, speeding the wrong way up a one-way street, endangering all aboard. I want those responsible for this misdirection – plutocrats, not just politicians – to be paraded before the people in sackcloth and ashes, their fortunes depleted, their pride degraded to pathetic pleading.

                  My antipathy extends beyond this regime’s most egregious crimes to their every abettor and bet. If they accidentally did something right, it was for the wrong reason, therefore wrong. I shudder even at their hairstyles and profanity. Rezoning Mar-a-Lago for affordable housing hardly seems a penalty too harsh.

                  Is my rage reasonable? Am I not an advocate of civility, inclusion, the mercy of Lincoln and the Sermon on the Mount? Doesn’t wrath breed wrath, hate hate?

                  No happy hellion I, I insist, whooping with hilarity while my enemies writhe! Quiet is my habitat, the quiet of a library and clause-clotted prose; nuance my preference, inaudible in a roar. I endorse my mom’s malapropriate guidance: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it.” What changed me, pushed me over the brink into this fulminating froth?

                  Loss.

                  These thugs deprived me of calm, equanimity, optimism, making me loathe my mirrored face. I’m ashamed how they showed me to the world. I can no more dissociate myself from their mischief than a parent from a vicious child.

                  My loss is unreimbursable, not just of joy, which might rebound, but of years and tears. The ink I’ve wasted on the Nameless One when I might have been ingling the new! Embittering, this bitterness toward our kind. I like myself less thanks to them. I’m less fun to be around.

                  Oughtn’t cooler heads prevail?

                  They ought – I’m working on it: these paragraphs, by airing fury, hope to hush it. By venting, rage persuades itself of its futility. Have a good cry, Carll, and get on with it – let bygones be bygones.

                  I know the emotional course I favor. I set my rudder in that direction. But the wind’s against me. My pain demands its pound of flesh.

The urge to vengeance cannot be wished away. It will out or sour the soul. Saint Paul counsels leaving punishment to God:

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

But even God, it seems, needs to whack his attackers, notwithstanding His omnipotence.

                  Another recommended rage therapy is to melodize. What sweet music hearing one’s enemies howl! Shakespeare was a master of this: we thrill to hear his villains vow torments. Richard III (“Now is the winter of my discontent”) is but one in a gallery of memorable monsters we cheer.

Handel composed “revenge arias.” Juno, in his delectable oratorio Semele, recommends it:

       Above measure
Is the pleasure,
Which my revenge supplies.

Revenge arias tend to be tricky to sing, with quick complicated roulades, keeping the singer so focused they may forget the cause.

                  I’m giving music a try here. I really don’t want to see all those smirking puffy faces impaled on pikes around the White House.  I do and I don’t. Envisioning the gore in euphonious syllables makes it almost gore enough.