The Sound and the Fury

Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.--(from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth)

Early this morning I risked life and limb by going to the end of our ice-encrusted driveway in the freezing rain to rescue our once-hallowed New York Times. As it turned out it was hardly worth it, riddled as it is these days with biased articles written by holier-than-thou Democrats about how shitty the Republicans are and (of course) how Trump must go. I knuckled down and gave it my best effort,  making my way through four or five stories despite noticing my sensitive blood pressure begin to simmer.

Finally, after absorbing the opening graph of an appallingly personal confession of a man "in transition" sharing his/her excitement over the fact that in just seven hours he/she will finally be getting a vagina that will hurt for the rest of his/her life, and how happy that makes him/her (which is odd because I happen to have a vagina I was born with and I hate it when it hurts), feeling slightly disgusted I turned to the crossword puzzle and settled in for a good time, putting aside the remainder of the paper for future kindling in the barbie.

Then my husband showed up, muttering his dismay over a Facebook diatribe he had received from a rabid liberal who foamed at the mouth (in print) for approximately 800 words over how much that "pussy-grabbing Trump" sucks, how FOX News isn't news at all, how dumb every last fucking Republican voter is, the evil of separating parents and children at the border and putting them in cages(!), and more like that. (Talk about your sound and fury signifying nothing.) Mitch was doubly distressed by the fact that his identical twin brother, with whom he had shared tight living quarters for nine long months inside their mother's womb, had publicly agreed with every hideously twisted word. ("Baa, baa, baa," Neil had essentially written.)

How did this happen, I wondered, thinking back to my working days at the Democratic National Committee where half the staff including several higher-ups were literally making deals in actual back rooms while snorting coke, and to my rich liberal Chevy Chase friends who hated blacks and Jews (except not me because I was "one of the good ones"), and my super-liberal Takoma Park (a "nuclear-free zone" D.C. suburb) friends who one day realized with shock that they had never invited a black person into their home despite attending numerous protests for all the right causes.

If it weren't so depressing it might be amusing to watch all of them scramble onto their high horses, even while their hearts and minds are down in the muck with the rest of humanity.