The centuries of trying to keep segments of society blind, homeless, destructively employed or unemployed, out of the halls of power do not need pardon or forgiveness,  only a speedy and public end.  A nation that shed blood for the right to call Black men “boys” must confess that (a) the perfume they have been spraying everywhere masks reality and (b) admit that  they in the shed and cannot find the toilet paper.  The seemingly endless capers of toothless lions bragging about defeating ants and commiserating about not finding health care for all, and not seeing homes for all under the spacious skies, does roll to an abrupt halt.

Impartial counsel is beyond most leaders.   It takes a great deal of discipline to establish excellence, a great deal of humiliation to achieve superiority, and a great deal of optic disability to create a culture of lies.  The state defines the limits of what people can say and where they can say those things.   Just because people are talking about excellence, superiority and deception does not mean that they have taken the medicine.

Remember Mitt Romney “Trump’s a fraud” or Ted Cruz’s savage denunciation of the orange threat, other senators expressions of disgust with the 45th president?  It is going to give you whiplash if what politicians say tops your list of things to feed your joy and safety.  Please remember too the watchmen – religious leaders – who said nothing or the wrong things about the corrupt use of power, the thefts, the trashing of trust in public service, and the divisions sown by the 45th president and his party.

The whole European narrative of persecution, flight, discovery of new lands, settlements and pioneer genius has been a smelly concoction that kills both the ones telling it and the ones who are essential to the story. “Go, paper lions” I say, “and park your capers where the sun shines a lot or not”.