'O Captain! My Captain! Rise Up And Hear The Bells . . . '

MARK BRYAN

The Ship of State is rudderless, its once mighty sails shredded, and all the crew can do is look on in horror as the lifeboats are lowered. 

Everything we had feared about the Captain — his malignant narcissism, inability to separate reality from fantasy and so much more — has come to pass.  In these once proud United States, we cower in fear of a "leader" who is unable to feel compassion and when called out by the "fake" news media reliably doubles down.  The world is flat because I say so, dammit to Hell! 

First Mate Bannon is not the problem.  His poisonous presence on the bridge is merely a reflection of a Captain who is unable to distinguish between a monument to George Washington honoring his visionary patriotism and one to Robert E. Lee erected in the service of maintaining white supremacy.  Who sees a moral equivalence between Nazis and those who oppose Nazis.  Who is blindered to the reality that Heather Heyer is dead because of the dystopian dream of her executioner to make Amerika great again -- a white, fascist ethnostate. 

But that moral equivalence thing can't be right because the Ship of State has no moral compass.   

And it seems like only a matter of time before the ship topples off the edge of that flat earth and into the abyss, Second Mates McConnell and Ryan desperately hanging onto the Captain's coattails as they continue to defend the indefensible. 

The Captain is ignorant of the waters in which he sails.  And so besodden with grievance that he erupts into a spray of spittle-inflected rage when questioned about his hateful views and then in response tramples on Ms. Heyer's freshly dug grave, Chief Navigator Kelly bringing neither order nor calm to the bridge, merely crossing his arms and staring at his shoes in impotent dismay as the Captain rages.

This is the point when we might reasonably ask, "So what are we going to do about it? How to get the Ship of State back on course when the crew shows no signs of mutinying?" 

Weep, my friends.  And then pray.