It’s always running in the background. It’s always here. A relentless hum, a buzzing in our ears.

Even if it’s a good day, for whatever reason, it rears its ugly head at some point, like a chronic headache, an unwanted pall that settles in and ruins the vibe. It sometimes feels like we’re all living on borrowed time, like we’re trying to maintain a semblance of normalcy, hoping we’re not seeing what we’re seeing, maybe sticking our heads in the sand, or plugging our ears and singing “la, la, la…” while the foundation crumbles around us.

There is a growing sense of inevitability, though, because the cast of black hats in Washington D.C. are intentionally thwarting the rule of law, thumbing their noses at it, and getting away with it. Who can stop them, and what’s it gonna take?

Sure, there are demonstrations nationwide. People are unhappy and letting that be known. But doesn’t everyone also know that violence is likely to be where this is heading?

It seems we’re taking every step to ward that off, to hold it off. But what are the options when Trump ignores the SCOTUS rulings and in general scoffs at the Constitution and circumvents everything created to avoid this exact scenario? What happens when someone attempts to enforce the laws and find Trump in contempt? Does he cue the January 6 pardonees to make trouble because their time has finally arrived? Does he have sway over our armed forces and law enforcement in general—enough to get them to turn on their fellow countrymen and women? It could be like Kent State, on steroids, and then it’s a snowball running down a steep incline from there.

What should boil everyone’s blood is that the cracked minds who conceived Project 2025 are likely to have anticipated most of what has unfolded thus far, including the anti-oligarchy tour and the nationwide protests and the SCOTUS rulings and all the roadblocks people have attempted to put up. Roberts, Vought, Vance, Miller, Bannon—they all want revolution, and they don’t care how it unfolds.

Remember what Kevin Roberts said back before the election, about an ongoing second American revolution that will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be…”– as if we’re all supposed to take what’s currently happening sitting down?

What should boil our blood is that there were plain-as-day, bright and bold and massive signs of foreboding all along the way. And voters either ignored or blew right past them, electing a nightmare with teeth this time around.

Limited media access, huh? Sounds like someone is a-scayewed.

Come on, Donald. You don’t get the concept, do you? You’re so thin-skinned and ill-equipped that it hurts you to the core when someone finds fault or simply disagrees with you. You’re easily dented. It might have occurred to you by now, but in case it hasn’t… did you ever think that maybe you’re in the wrong line of work?

You shouldn’t be POTUS. You shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office. Presidents of the United States need to roll with the punches and take the heat from people who are legitimately hurting and angry. Presidents, whether fair or not, are often the focal point of the anger and frustration of the people they serve.

But you, of course, don’t really serve anyone. Elections don’t matter; the Constitution doesn’t matter; the will of the people doesn’t matter. You lie to get what you want, and the people are left hanging. It’s always been a one-way street with you, hasn’t it?

“Feed me,” you beg. “Look at me, adore me, indulge me. Let me stand at a microphone and pontificate nonsensically and irrelevantly while you give me your undivided attention. Please?”

To hear Rachel Maddow tell it, the assault is on, and has been since before Trump took office. The Heritage Foundation’s deranged brainchild is finding its footing, currently focused on bringing the nation’s institutions of higher learning to their knees, freezing grant money and other funding under the sham pretense of rooting out anti-Semitism, trying to put Columbia and Cornell and Harvard and the rest out of business and selling the real estate, or at least hobbling them to the point that they have no voice, can no longer produce graduates with heads on their shoulders and functioning bullshit meters that can assess Project 2025 for what it is: an ugly, dystopian, oppressive tool of paranoid tyrants and convenient Christians.

It should be clear by now that Matt Gaetz’s nomination was a mere trial balloon, as if the powers that be were testing the waters, and trying to make the rest who amazingly made it through the confirmation process look… normal?

Anyway, if they get their way, there will be many fewer around who are savvy and brave enough to point to Kevin Roberts or Russell Vought or JD Vance or Steve Bannon and the rest and convince anyone that these are the bad guys.

Ms. Maddow is smart and thorough and insightful, but she’s been raising her voice a lot lately, alarmed and trying to sound the alarm, highlighting all the protests big and small, in an attempt at giving her listeners both a little hope but also a warning that this is an actual emergency of the first magnitude.

If we don’t awaken now, it’ll be a case of waking up one morning in the not-so-distant future and discovering the hard way that everything familiar and dependable, everything that once made sense, is gone. Just like that.

Trump and the rest truly don’t care about America or anyone who lives here. They only care about themselves and the power they can acquire and wield. Their “new world order” is nothing more than America eviscerated, in isolation and ruins, and their pockets lined. There are, apparently, a lot of people willing to sell their souls.

Voters thought it was all about the price of eggs and their pocketbooks? Not even close.

Anything of import that happens is liable to get our full attention here on earth. It’ll be front and center in newspapers and on the cable channels, bandied about and discussed ad nauseum on social media. The talking heads will be uttering their mix of swill and wisdom, and many of us will either have our boxers in a bunch or be happy as pigs in shit.

But zooming out into the solar system and universe, all will be quiet, relatively speaking. None of what happens here, as far as we know, makes a hill of beans of difference in the larger scheme of things. For all we know, we’re isolated in the universe, screaming into the void, immersed in trivial pursuits, engaged in fruitless arguments, killing each other out of aggression or self-defense, or because our religious beliefs egg us on with threats of eternal damnation or promise of great reward; fighting stupidity and ignorance instead of pursuing cures and vaccines and inroads on suffering, all the while occasionally still doing something amazing for the benefit of humankind.

All of this in a massive solar system in a corner of an even more massive galaxy in a mind-blowingly enormous universe, where everything is expanding, and what happens here on Earth stays here on Earth. As far as we know.

Well, except for space probes and rockets, a relative handful of humans, and thousands of animals.

Rory McIlroy finally got his green jacket.

I watched the entire final round of The Masters golf tournament yesterday, all the way through to the clinching putt on the first playoff hole, and I must say it was riveting television. Rory was up by as many as four, then lost the lead, got it back, had a chance to win it on the 18^th hole in regulation but missed a par putt, then went back to the 18^th for the first playoff hole against Justin Rose and repeated the great drive, but had a much better approach shot that left him with maybe a 3 1/2-footer for birdie.

Rose missed his birdie attempt, Rory made his, and the pent-up emotion just poured out of him, right there on the green and all the way to Butler Cabin, in front of the masses gathered there and a world-wide television audience. It was a great moment—an athlete at the pinnacle of his sport, finally achieving what had been an elusive goal since early in his career. Pure catharsis, pure joy.

For a few shining moments, it made me forget about the spray-tanned dumpster fire that normally dominates the headlines.

I checked out the website of a local Lutheran church, in anticipation of maybe attending on Easter morning. This congregation is in transition. Again.

They recently had to say goodbye to a young, energetic pastor who had the almost inevitable opportunity to move on to greener pastures, but who they would have preferred to hang onto forever. Based on a couple of recently recorded services that I viewed, they are in retreat. Again.

It’s a sad thing to see, but often the way these things go. It might make one think that a vibrant, vital, viable congregation showing signs of life has little to do with the movement of the Spirit. It’s much more about the gifts and energy a person as Pastor brings to the table. When he or she is there, there is life. When he or she leaves, families either leave with him or her, or they look for a different congregation that can “provide what they’re looking for,” whatever that is. And the congregation with a vacancy withers for a while, until another leader comes along. Anymore, they could be waiting a long time for that to happen.

Congregations aren’t self-sustaining. Residual energy and dedicated lay leadership may help them for a while, but, by and large, as the Pastor goes, so goes a congregation.

Now I’m confused.

Bill Maher gets to have dinner with Trump, at the White House, under the auspices of détente, of bringing MAGA and us libtards together, and he tells us that the guy seems like a normal Joe. Not sure I’m gonna be able to properly process this, or move beyond the suspicion that Maher is simply being proactive.

He said he had several opportunities to give The Donald the what for during the course of his visit, and that Trump seemed to take it all in stride. But it’s really hard not to think that ol’ Bill was deceived, fed a line and feeding us one. It seems more likely that he was greasing the skids, putting in a good word for himself so Trump wouldn’t come after him after all the years of talking shit about him.

It has the ring of capitulation to it, of trying to save his own ass. If that’s the case, then things are worse than we thought.