Harry and Meghan to the rescue, to interject a bit of faux angst into the midst of a whole host of more pressing concerns.

Forgive me for not feeling their pain. It predictably made for some must-see TV, and Oprah got kudos for being the interviewer par excellence. Her questions didn’t sound that tough to me, what I heard of them on the news. It all feels more like relentless prying, a pursuit of dirt and a juicy story. Like contrived emotion, and manipulation, an attempt at creating some existential battle against oppression. For all to see. And of course it has many Brits in a dither.

I will never understand the gravity here. Harry was born into it, but Meghan had to have a pretty good sense of what she was getting into. These are people who crave the notoriety despite what they say to the contrary, who want their cake and want to eat it, too, who are used to being fawned over and may even have come to expect the attention as some sort of entitlement. It’s really hard to imagine them wanting to walk away from their fish bowl life.

It’s difficult to see them as persecuted heroes and trailblazers of some sort. And yet they can come on national television and offer up a sob story that somehow and inevitably involves “poor” Diana. Millions tune in, and walk away feeling sorry for the young, anchorless couple cast as wronged, put-upon figures and pariahs at the same time. They and the rest of the “royal” family have served as nothing more than distractions for as long as I can remember.

John Oliver’s name may be mud in England, but he summed things up perfectly in 2018 when he said the royal family is a collection of “fundamentally flawed people doing a pseudo job.” It’s a 1200-year old, fossilized Anglo-Saxon institution that has no real-world relevance, except to serve as spectacle and soap opera.

And a way for people to vicariously live their dreams of a privileged life.

I wouldn’t make a good reporter. Only certain things excite me. I’m not interested in a lot of what ends up getting covered in your average newspaper. I’m motivated more by what triggers an emotional response, often anger, or parsing what is fair and unfair. For the past four years it’s been Donald Trump and his idiocy. It’s been easy to be critical of and mad at him and the stellar cast of jokers around him. There has been an endless supply of material.

Now that Joe Biden is President, I’m somewhat less stressed but continue to be motivated by the Republican stonewalling and their infuriating predictability, their unshakable allegiance to Trump, and how this continues to exact a toll of some sort.

For members of Congress, it really appears to be as straightforward as whose coattails they can ride so they can keep their jobs, who they can schmooze, with little consideration given to character or competence. This ongoing dissonance continues to stir things up for me.

The pushback in Texas and elsewhere regarding the lifting of the mask mandate is heartening. Gov. Abbott reasons that the decision to wear or not wear will be left up to the wise and discerning citizens of the Lonestar State.

I’ve heard someone on the late night crew liken this to removing the stop signs or traffic signals at a busy intersection and leaving the navigation to wise and discerning motorists who will figure things out for themselves, one way or another.

This is really the whole past year in microcosm. There has always been someone who feels obligated to swim against the current for no other reason than they just don’t like being told what to do. And this sentiment is magnified in Texas, because, well… it’s Texas.

The latest antic by Republicans has been employed on previous occasions, namely in 2009 during the debate over the ACA, I believe. At that time, in order to stall and delay the inevitable, the GOP decided that the entirety of the bill would have to be read aloud in the chamber, before any action could be taken. In the spirit of trolling and turnabout being fair play, the Dems hired a speed reader.

They’re doing the same thing with the COVID recovery bill, wrangling the poor Senate clerks into reading the entire bill out loud (while most of the Senators got to go home?). No speed reader this time. In the old days of filibustering, the dissenting Senators would have to stand up and offer rebukes and rebuttals themselves, sometimes for hours on end, but not anymore.

I understand that the tools at the disposal of the Senate minority are limited, but in this instance the delay seems more cold-hearted and unnecessary than usual, given the sense of urgency that exists. This time around, it’s more a predictable formality implemented by a group of Republicans who serve in the shadow of Ebenezer Trump, and who are only too ready to say “down” when the Dems say “up.”  

Politics aside, the “optics” of this tactic are not casting the elephant party in the most flattering light. Ron Johnson and company are on a mission from God, apparently. Still, when all is said and done, the bill is going to pass. So, other than wasting everyone’s time, what will have been accomplished, besides drawing attention to legislation that is popular even among Republican voters?

Often enough, I find myself still trying to capture how I feel about the Trump years. There is a visceral anger that continues to simmer, along with frustration at still not being able to find the words that adequately capture the depth and breadth of my disdain for him and, with few exceptions, everyone else who “served” in his administration.

There are no kind words. None. Only smoldering anger bordering on hatred for him and the fact that he never honored the trust inherent in the office. He never appreciated the office he fell into. He simply and unabashedly used it.

He was unprepared, unqualified, visionless, impressionable, unreasonable, immature, more ignorant than maliciously evil. Power-hungry, attention-starved, provincial, racist, cold-hearted, magnificently unsuited to handle what the job demands of anyone who attains it. He seemed intent on tearing this country and the world apart– withdrawing from agreements, fixated on deregulation, possessive of a blinding self-interest that thrust us headlong into the darkness of a pandemic.

Yet he is still the star of the Republican Party. How is that possible?

The inference, subtext, theme is a disdain for public opinion. Because, really, is the general public all that well informed? Or are they just parroting someone else’s words and opinions? Jumping on one bandwagon or another, not all that interested in digging deeper or having opinions challenged by contrary evidence.

It’s not a bad thing that our elected leaders aren’t always swayed by public opinion. Because how many people actually take the time to weigh both sides of an issue or do any research whatsoever before saying something out loud? Some do, I’m sure. It seems often enough, though, to be less an informed public, than just a reactive one.

It’s gratifying to see the pushback Gov. Abbott is getting for lifting the mask mandate in TX. Good for Texans. I wonder how widespread the sentiment is. Made it as far as some of the big papers in the state.

This is what has been at the root of our year-long misery, though– safety vs. money, reason vs. pride and stubbornness. Science vs. whatever hard-headed ignorance is the opposite of that.

Someone likened him to a lingering case of herpes.

Trump was the keynote speaker at CPAC on Sunday, an event filled with conservative… luminaries? Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, that senator from AZ– Paul Gosar– who actually agreed to be the keynoter at a more radical, right wing, white supremacist conference held elsewhere.

Trump, ever the inflated ego monster, at some point asked the crowd something like, “Do you miss me yet?” and of course everyone went bananas. Again, who are these people, and why are they still smitten with such a lightweight? And why does he still get press coverage, why does he still warrant having access to a microphone? The irony, the challenge of the First Amendment right to free speech is that the spewers of lies and filth get to keep spewing and lying. And of course I get to keep enjoying the description of Trump likened to a “lingering case of herpes.”

If this is truly where millions of Americans are in their thinking—still crying “foul” over election results, still claiming and pronouncing and embracing a woeful ignorance of “what the Bible says,” still convinced that Trump is some sort of messianic figure, still pedaling and believing the horrendous lies about liberal Dem child molesters—then woe is us. It is truly discouraging that Republican talking points never rise above the delusional and delirious and hate-filled.

Mitch– are you buying this stuff? Are you with these people? You recently said you’d absolutely support Donald Trump if he decided to run in 2024. What’s your strategy here? What do you believe today? What’s your belief du jour?

First day of March, 2021. Just about a year since the s really hit the f.

Stats are telling us that the downturn in cases and hospitalizations has stalled again, so once more we find ourselves at a place where we have to choose between ignoring the history or doubling down and modifying our behavior for the sake of keeping this thing at bay until the vaccines (3 options now!) do their thing. I’m not optimistic, but maybe this time we learn?

Maybe the only thing keeping us from numbers off the charts, again, is that there hasn’t been a Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday people just had to be together for. There was no significant uptick after the Super Bowl, so maybe folks are finally taking this seriously. We’ll see.

The variants are here, one in particular, and apparently taking hold. This is our chance to see that our behavior, our choices, make a difference.   

It’s a bit of a mystery why there has been so much fretting and differences of opinion over giving the vaccine to teachers. Why wouldn’t teachers be on the 1A list? While they may not be working in ERs or ICUs, they are still potentially exposed on a regular basis in those places that are meeting in person. There may be procedures and protocols and precautions that appear to be working in various districts, the stats indicate a low transmission rate when these precautions are followed, but no system is perfect. Why depend on something with so many moving parts when a simple shot or two in the arm will go a long way to quieting the resistance?

The cries are for children to get out of the house and back into the classroom. Well, meet the teacher demand for vaccination, then proceed accordingly. It’s a no-brainer.