Rational discussion ain't in it.

Not for last week. Every time I try and put a coherent train of thought together, it morphs on me. Into a tangle of wisps, all twisted and bitter.

I repeatedly fight the urge to I told you to those who I care about, those of good will who wanted to at least grant him initially that hope that he'd be able to step up to the job.

But again, those close to me who've spent the past couple of years in slowly dawning horror to the reality, those whose opinions I care for, don't need me reminding them of "He's dragging the worst of the worst back into the daylight."

Others, well, I'm back to keeping my mouth closed rather than write about it.

"They" consumes, dehumanizes. Yes, and perhaps especially. There are folks who have well earned every bit of what will come. Who continue to earn it.

And there are folks, many more of them, who will continue, in small steps, to understand that they've tied themselves to the descendants of those who set bombs in churches. And at the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Who do not just use nooses and the battle flag as decoration. Their grandparents, alive or dead, smile the secret smile, whether they're hoisting it to drive through a neighborhood and remind everyone to "don't poke your head above".

Or parading through the rotunda. Along with the more convenient, more contemporary labels of convenience.

How do you separate Madame Defarge from those who would rejoin the light, if they're sure the path is available?

Well, Mdme's Defarge scream out, in agony that their money supply might be threatened. That those they've cultivated, year after year, sheared of their five dollars here, their ten dollars there...

Those who hold out a hand, even of "just please leave me alone, this wasn't what I wanted", I don't know.

But I know of Defarge and the others. Always ready to scream for the blood of others.

My grandmother's brother once introduced the idea of "Who turns Nazi?" to me. Years ago. The lesson is a brutal one. A necessary one.

And yes, of course there are nuances.

And then, there's the immediate question. Books, and writers of them we lie to you.

We present a stream, and ask you drink from it. Yet life comes in small decisions, one at a time. Large decisions too, but they still arrive one per customer per moment.

We give, if we're lucky, a few little precious lights, small wavering candles to, one might hope, illuminate each of those decisions. I grow weary and suspicious of the encrustations.

The barnacle layers of lens enclosing the few hard-won flames.

I grow disinterested in the bottomless wells of obfuscation always ready to cover up the important bits: Be excellent to each other. Help a neighbor when they're down. Love one another.

Noise, a purpose or just the sheer number of cars on the freeway, can overwhelm the information. Make it difficult to listen for, extract.

But not forever, and not for always.