Certain right-wing readers in a state of gloating agitation — their normal demeanor — alerted me early on that liberals are planning to scream helplessly at the sky today to protest the election one year ago of President Donald Trump.
How thoughtful of these readers to raise the alarm. Otherwise, this event would not have come to my attention, being as it is totally meaningless and inconsequential. Of course, my informants saw it differently. They saw it as absolutely typical of everybody who doesn’t think the president is a swell guy.
To their mind, three people and a dog could assemble to scream at the sky and this would prove definitively that all liberals are idiots, snowflakes, crybabies and poor losers, every single one, even if millions of us wouldn’t think to emit a peep at an event so silly.
Instead of making far-fetched political points, I think right-wingers with time on their hands would be better off worrying about the dog.
But making mountains out of molehills is the time-honored way of the talk radio mindset — find something stupid, easy in a country of more than 325 million people, and then make it emblematic of everybody you disagree with.
In fact, it has become a maxim of political life in these disunited states of America that the more political cranks get obsessed about something, the more unimportant is the issue troubling them.
All emotion and no reason is the standard recipe for much ado about nothing. This is how the fretting about transgender people going to the bathroom led to absurd legislation in some states proposing solutions to no known problem. If only we could direct the same energy to real problems.
How about rising inequality and the gap between the rich and poor? If anybody really cared about elites, Trumpsters would not be supporting the elimination of the death tax — as now proposed — the surest way of perpetuating elites generation unto generation. The Trump plan in general is bound to increase federal deficits hugely. But why worry about that when some NFL players are still kneeling for the national anthem?
It is enough to make any sane person scream, not that I am suggesting that.
As of this writing, I do not know how the scheduled screaming on Boston Common and other places around the nation will go down. I think the idea is as dopey as it could be but, if it irritates people who deserve to be irritated, then I can see it as a bit of fun and a way of letting off steam.
Still, ever old-fashioned, I think protesters with any spare steam would be better off using it to power an engine headed down a more productive track.
But this protest does raise a question: If screaming at the sky is so offensive to the good sense of right-thinking people, I wonder what sort of protest would be acceptable to them? I suppose taking a knee and staring at the sky is out of the question. How about some bursts of fire into the sky from automatic weapons? (Using blanks, of course, lest endangered birds be startled.) That might win conservative approval but probably not.
The only sure way for those of the anti-Trump persuasion to win favor is to shut up completely and do nothing. Why, they need to follow the example of conservatives who were so gracious and accepting after Barack Obama won the presidency.
Wait … they founded the Tea Party before the new president had even figured out where the bathrooms were in the White House. The sky was not the limit in their objections to the alleged socialist who had won the election. Talk about crybabies. They bitterly protested every single thing he did. And they wore funny hats while being poor losers.
Overall, I think that the country will survive the horror of any screaming. Whether we survive the horror of what set off the screaming is still an open question.
However, I don’t understand why the sky has to be yelled at. What has the sky ever done wrong? As was famously said, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves …”
Look up in the sky. … Is that a bird, a plane or a Russian hacker mining the cloud? Don’t scream for Superman — it’s his day off — but stay focused on what is happening down here and try not to look too stupid. It only makes right-wingers gleeful.
Reg Henry: rhenry@post-gazette.com
First Published: November 8, 2017, 5:00 a.m.
