Those of us that work in education have to balance an unbridled optimism and joy that we want to share with students with the mounting frustrations we deal with. It presents an interesting dichotomy, but in my mind it is fairly easy. I am increasingly discovering that it is the adults that are the source of the frustration. When you keep peeling back that onion you soon discover that virtually all of the adults see eye to eye on what should really be done. We are just left to go with the flow in an impersonal system that has its own ways and own mind about such things. I have to practice turning off the frustrated face and switching the happy one back on.

Generally speaking, I try to be a jovial person. I haven’t always been this way. I experienced a bit of a conversion several years when I entered the hospital with a staph infection. I came out of that experience with all my fingers and toes and with a new understanding that nothing is ever guaranteed.

This is a daily battle. It is a daily battle to look at things from the bright side. It isn’t something that comes naturally or easily. Gratitude is a choice and it is one that has to be made daily. Grievance leads to anger, frustration, and more importantly envy. Envy leads to the dark side. This is where so many people are these days. Avoiding it involves seeing it and acknowledging it. It involves a self-talk that can bring me out of that head space.

The last several weeks in particular have produced three noble truths that I cannot ignore. First, I am angry. There is a meme going around where we acknowledge that both sides hate. One side hates women, black people, immigrants, liberals, and LGTBQ+. The other side hates bigots. Hate is a strong word, but the anger is palpable.

The second noble truth is that this anger is justified. I don’t think people quite understand what life is like for a progressive Christian these days. We feel that our faith has been hijacked on one side and is being mocked on another front. When we were growing up we learned what we were supposed to be as Christians. We were taught to love everyone. We were taught to accept everyone. We were taught that our love and charity shouldn’t come with strings attached.

Then, when we tried to live according to that creed we were told we were not Christian. We just weren’t judgmental enough. We were only Christian if we supported a man that represented every vice we were warned about growing up. So, that when we say we are Christian we are immediately judged by those that follow someone that represents just about everything evil in the world. Of course, we were then judged by those non-Christians that simply being Christian means you are an asshole like they are.

The anger is justified because it masks a profound sadness. It masks a sadness for the loss of loved ones that have been taken in by hate. They have been taken in by bigotry, grievance, and disinformation. I feel powerless to do anything and say anything. Decency has become a vice. Cruelty has become a virtue. Up is down. Left is right. Black is white. In this bizarro world, the ravings of a demented and evil man become virtue and truth. Of course, I’m angry. It is the stage after the anger that worries me.

Last night, our parish decided to add a prayer to the list of prayers we say at every mass. This prayer was for us to give us wisdom to choose the candidate that would best bring about the kingdom of God. They added a bit about choosing the candidates that would serve the needs of the people and not look to be served.

I was struck by two things there. First, none of the candidates were mentioned by name. No parties were mentioned as the preferred party. That was obviously left up to us. Secondly, I know some candidates immediately came to mind and that is particularly true when the idea of serving vs. being served was mentioned. I also know that everyone else in the congregation had the same amount of certainty, but their certainty might be different than mine.

This brings us to the real topic of the day. What do we do on November 6th? Obviously, we can assume that the results will not be known immediately because right wing activists won’t allow the results to be clear by that point. I hate to sound like a partisan hack, but the right is the only group claiming the elections are rigged and fighting the results.

We are scared. We are frightened. We want to figure out how to defend ourselves. Some of us will likely flee to another country. Some will buy a firearm or some other tool to defend their home in the worst of cases. Others may attempt to move off the grid to protect their family.

We do this because we are scared. We are scared because of the rampant disinformation that we see about everything. I’ve gone over that too. If you constantly are bombarded with bullshit it is hard not to get activated by it. One of two things is bound to happen. Either you start to believe it or you know it is wrong and hearing it repeated makes you more and more angry.

When I go through confirmation classes I usually read something called “The Missing Piece” by Shel Silverstein. Essentially, the idea is that each of us is broken in some way. We aren’t quite whole. However, that brokenness comes with advantages in the story. You are able to stop and smell the roses or talk to a bug. When you are complete you can’t do those things.

Yet, the moral to the story is that this brokenness only gets healed when we find the missing piece. That missing piece is other people. The hardest lesson to learn and the most important lesson to learn is that there are truly very few bad people in this world. Most of them are just not a fit for us in that moment. Being unfit for us doesn’t make them bad. It just means they are a better fit for someone else.

Good leaders understand this basic principle. We are flawed when we separate ourselves and isolate ourselves. We are perfect when we work together. The tragedy of the last decade is that we have allowed someone to divide us and isolate us. We each carry some responsibility for putting ourselves in this predicament and we each carry some responsibility to get ourselves out of this hole.

It starts by hopefully moving on from this period on November 6th. As I sit here, I don’t know what the end result will be. Either we will start putting the pieces back together or we will find our missing pieces somewhere else. This current America cannot stand. It will not stand. We will be different on November 6th. Whether it is for the best or not remains to be seen.

“28 Days Later” was one of the more frightening plots I’ve sat through. I suppose one could claim that it belongs somewhere on the zombie pantheon, but the way things got started was unique. Somehow monkeys were being tested and were filled with so much rage that their entire physical composition changed.

Of course, whether it is completely realistic to go from 0 to 100 by simply getting a little blood mixed with yours is neither here nor there. It’s a movie and you suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy it. If we turn our attention to real life we notice that things seem to be trending in that direction. People aren’t becoming zombie-like or anything like that. At least they aren’t yet.

The Will Smith/Chris Rock incident by itself isn’t proof of anything. It was a public display of someone losing their cool that happened to be captured on national television. What is alarming is the reaction that all of us had to that event. Some people sided with Rock while others sided with Smith. Many claimed they were both in the wrong. Taking sides is not what’s alarming here. What’s alarming is how people identified with Smith and the anger he had.

People openly fantasized about who they would smack if given the chance. Others turned the incident into memes and used it as a collective joke. I have to cop to the humor portion. I told a few jokes on social media myself.

Violence is a symptom. More to the point, the fantasies and jokes about violence are also a symptom. We are an angry people. Anger has managed to soak into our lives much like a virus. How we fight for what we want changes. After all, there is a reason why people call politics blood sport these days.

Maybe the key in this whole thing is identifying a common enemy. America has always been at its best when we can focus our collective energies on a common enemy. We could be talking about our own revolution. We could be talking about Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan in World War II.

The problem these days is that the common enemy is becoming more and more elusive. That common enemy is rage. It seeps into our lives and eventually gets us to do and say things that we never would have done in the first place. It gets the MAGA folks to abandon any last bastions of humanity to back a black hole of a human being. He says things they wish they could say. He lives the way they think they want to live.

Naturally, those that oppose MAGA and Q also find themselves giving into rage. We are angry that our world is so ugly and people seem to be giving into the ugliness. We are angry that even after all these years, people seem to give into racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all other forms of bigotry. We are angry that after all of the hard work of previous generations, the advancements that we made seem to be in peril.

We are collectively angry because it seems we have a process that nobody thinks is fair. One side thinks there is massive voter fraud because their guy lost. Another side thinks gerrymandering and other voter suppression tactics have their thumbs on the scales. We certainly believe one of those more than the other, but anger is the thing that unites them.

More than allowing one side to win or lose, it is anger that we cannot allow to win. Fighting fire with fire feels good in the moment. It feels better than the alternative. Yet, is it really better? If anger pushes us to fight for what we want then did we win anything? It can feel like we did in the moment, but when the dust settles we will find that anger is undefeated and it’s coming for us all.

So, Samantha Bee calls Ivanka Trump a “feckless c***” for remaining silent while her father directs a policy that tears immigrant families apart and imprisons small children in converted big box stores.  The walls of these big box prisons actually have Soviet style murals of Trump complete with quotes from his book, The Art of the Deal.  Fake outrage over Bee’s verbal attack resulted in her forced apology for being unkind to Princess Ivanka.

Last weekend, Robert DiNiro shouted, “F*ck Trump!” several times during his few moments on stage at the Tony Awards on national television.  Again, que the right wing noise machine that whipped up fake outrage over DiNiro’s denouncement, but luckily, he doesn’t work for anyone and doesn’t care what they think.

Then came Frank Bruni of the NY Times, who did what most progressives, including Michelle and Barack Obama, do, and that’s chant the “when they go low, we go high” mantra.  His article this week tut-tutted, finger wagged, and warned ominously that getting mad and saying so will re-elect Trump and his cronies.  That advice is STUPID and exactly the tactic that got us Al Gore and John Kerry.  I’m sorry, but that is just plain wrong and stupidly puts artificial limits on good people’s ability to get pissed off.  Several of my progressive friends reposted the op-ed on Facebook, imploring all of us to take to the high road, because some mouth breathing, drooling knuckle dragger in Columbia Mississippi won’t like our anger and will decide not to vote for the Democrat.  That’s an idiotic notion.  Said mouth breathing, drooling knuckle dragger will NEVER vote for the Democrat.  Wake up.

Let’s think about what’s actually occurring every day in the United States.  Jeff Sessions, who is a lifelong hater of all people with dark-pigmented skin, has started a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal immigration and is jailing thousands of people.  Because all these people, including mothers of young children fleeing gang violence south of the border, are being jailed, their children are being torn from their parents, and imprisoned.  That should piss you off.  Ivanka Trump?  She’s using her father’s corruption to expand her own brand around the world, often using child labor, to stuff her Gucci purse full of millions.  Foreign dignitaries are pouring millions of dollars into Trump’s pockets through his hotel just down the street from the White House.  As I pointed out this week, Trump is also selling his own likeness on cheesy memorabilia peddled to the public using 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as the address of the business.  Trump’s corrupt cabinet members are working 24/7 to erase all progress made under Barack Obama while enriching themselves on the backs of the taxpayers.  He’s turned US diplomatic policy on its ear, attacking Canada as a “security risk” while French kissing the most evil and murderous dictator on the planet.

For Christ’s sake, Frank, what the hell does it take to piss you off?  Over the last 30 years, Republicans have proven that vicious anger works.  They’ve also proven that outrage over fake issues works like a charm.  That’s why you get gay bashing and racist attacks on right wing media just as election seasons get started.  That’s why the phony “war on Christmas” gins up anger among Fox Noise loyalists every year.  It works.  Keeping people outraged drives them to the polls.  Democrats don’t get that, and never have.  The result?  Republicans control all three branches of the federal government.  They control 33 governors’ mansions, and 66 of 99 legislative chambers.  Radical gerrymandering has cemented in these gains to protect them from changing demographics.

On Thursday, one writer got it right. Drew Magary of GQ Magazine hit Bruni right between the eyes, calling his nonsense nonsense.  He said of Bruni, “…once a wonderful restaurant critic and is now one of the most singularly inane political columnists working today…”.  And his rant was a long drive straight down the middle.  He put it this way:

“Bruni is far from alone in smarmily crying out THIS IS WHY TRUMP WON! every time a liberal gets angry about something they ought to be angry about. It is the laziest, stupidest theory, one that posits that the only possible way to take down Trump from his evildoing is to keep your voice so quiet that everyone else can opt out of hearing it. It’s also a clear case of naked pandering from newspapers that skew liberal but still yearn—whether for financial reasons or out of sheer vanity—to appear fair to both sides. This is how you end up with two sets of rules for each party. Republicans can be openly racist, nationalist, corrupt, and horny. Democrats have to be GOOD, because Americans apparently crave goodness even though 60 million of them voted for Donald Trump.”