Yes. It absolutely feels like watching a plane crash. It feels like "wishing this weren't happening" is the best one can do. But that's actually not true. The feeling that things are sadly inevitable is a kind of toxin secreted on the skin of malignancy to paralyze the impulse to do more than wish.

As individuals, as a culture, as adherents to an idea, we are what we do and create. Full stop. We are not the things we wish for, justify or explain. If you care for someone, you are a caregiver. If you wish someone would somehow be cared for, even if you wish for it with passion, you are nothing.

Not gonna lie, I'm about 88% Pearl with Jupiter in Torgo.

The beige with the white seat makes it almost too much to bear.

So beautiful and well made. Beyond.

Instead of what it actually is . . . a madness intended to exterminate the people and ideas whose existence calls into question assumptions about what it means to be worthy of participation in American life.

The insanity will (probably) dissipate and end. But it's hard to imagine how things will return to being "ok" again . . . except via a countervailing act of erasure that papers over the hate-frenzy we are in the midst of, recasting it as something in the mainstream of human possibility . . .

If you are white and of a certain age or economic or educational lineage, speak to your neighbors. You'll discover how much many of them are rooting for this erasure. You will see the kind of bacchic frenzy they are welcoming into their midst. It's the nature of Americans to do so from time to time.

Our culture has existed for about 250 years and we have had, perhaps, ten of them . . . or thereabouts. They are part of our culture, not an exception to it . . . They are (malignantly) a feature, not a bug. And, if we're honest, they come not from some lunatic ruling class, but from the grassroots.

Thanks to Free State Review and editor Barrett Warner (@riskingmelodrama.bsky.social) for having confidence in this piece.