The worst of Times

 If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

Ray Epps, Marine veteran, business owner and ardent Trump supporter, traveled from Arizona to Washington on January 5, 2021, to prevent what he had been told was a terrible injustice.  The following day when he found himself part of a well-primed mob, Epps did not enter the Capitol.  That was his first mistake, or possibly his second.  

Epps gave an interview to the New York Times this week but I am unable to read it without giving them money and I would rather have all my teeth removed by Rory McIlroy with a driver.  Business Insider will do nicely.  Epps agreed that he and his fellow patriots should indeed enter the Capitol, but when the riot began, there is video of him trying to prevent violence between "tourists" and Capitol police.  He says he contacted the FBI's National Threat Operations office on January 8 and records confirm this.  Another mistake.

Participants in the failed coup were divided at that point between calling it a visit by tourists and a false-flag operation by antifa/the deep state/Black Lives Matter/your villain here.  Sure enough, Ray Epps began to be accused on right-wing media of being an FBI undercover or informant stirring up trouble, a theory soon amplified by Ted Cruz, Thomas Massie, Tucker Carlson and other garbage humans.  He and his wife began to receive the customary death threats and he thought it prudent to sell his home and business and move into a mobile home somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.  Ray evidently knows what his fellow Trumpers are capable of.  

"And for what -- lies?  All of this, it's just been hell," he told the Times, echoing Shaye Moss, Adam Kinzinger, Christine Blasey Ford, Ilhan Omar, Anthony Fauci, and thousands of other politicians, librarians, doctors, teachers, election officials, judges and probably postal workers in the time of Trump.  I can only wonder why the Newspaper of Record thought Ray Epps's story was worthier than all the rest.  

Or rather, I could until I remembered the space and time they devoted to sympathetically interviewing anti-choice activists (mostly over 70) in blue states who can't take any joy in the forced-birth ruling of the Opus Dei court because that wicked medical procedure is still legal in places like New York and California.  (Florida, ladies, Florida.  Put your house on the market today.)  Or their ever-expanding roster of columnists evidently picked up at a National Review yard sale.  

Well, lookie what the Guardian says today:

"The Reuters Institute revealed last month that 42 percent of Americans actively avoid the news at least some of the time because it grinds them down, or they just don't believe it.  Fifteen percent said they disconnected from news coverage altogether."  The figures are even worse in the UK and Brazil where, coincidentally, democracy is also running for its life.  A Washington Post columnist, Amanda Ripley, says she has been "actively avoiding the news for years."  I hope she's a food writer.

The National Suicide Prevention hotline now has an emergency number:  988.  But we're just fine.  Keep America Great.