All Rather Real

I had an email to deal with first thing in the morning.  It would take up a lot of time and mean digging back over many old emails.  Precisely what I did not want to be doing this morning.  Amidst this I feverishly reviewed the news, procrastinating.  Just one more article. 

But the articles were all making me feel more downhearted.  Looks more and more like Russian intelligence was deliberately working against the Democrats, deliberately supporting Donald Trump.  As has happened more than once in this campaign the story line was so predictable and thin as to seem beneath a second rate Hollywood script.  But this provocation was all rather real. 

And I continued on to read about the disarray before the convention I spied another story that suggested that Trump had enjoyed a bounce after his convention and was running side by side Hillary in national polls.  Could this be?  This struck me as especially unfathomable.  And terrifying.  Like many, I need to believe that Trump could simply never be elected. 

I assembled my email and watched the news stream in from the convention. The thought of ‘boos’ throughout the evening from frustrated Bernie supporters was enervating.  And neither Al Franken, nor Paul Simon was doing much to settle things.  But Michelle: thank you.  Wasn’t she wonderful?  She truly was a ‘bridge over a gurgling chasm, managing to channel Simon and quite a bit more.  Steely, gentile, courageous, articulate and centered like some north pole lode stone, she skewered Trump in a way I haven’t seen anyone do, without even mentioning his name, and in a way that remarkably seemed to befuddle even Don.  I haven’t seen any tweets swiping at her, as if to suggest that even he knows she’s unassailable.  Or that even he has to acknowledge the depth of her critique.