It’s not my anger, exactly. Or not solely my anger.
The anger is real enough. It burns on the abundant tinder of cruelty, greed, lawlessness and warplay that mark our time.
But it’s more than anger. It’s anger amplified by disbelief that trust has vanished. That we’ve dumped mutual caring for tribal belonging. That we care less about the truth and even our neighbors.
It’s disbelief, too, that we remain in trance to a strutting fake populist playing the victim while cosplaying as King of All.
And it’s more. It’s guilt that, while feeling morally wounded, I’ve escaped the real injuries of unemployment, family separation and death that draw cackles from the ministers of hate in our proudly soulless government.
It’s guilt that I haven’t done more, myself, to blunt the assault, that I don’t know how to.
It’s one thing more.
Fear.
Fear unlike any I’ve felt since those laughably pointless nuclear attack drills in grade school. The future is always murky. It’s frighteningly so now, and I’m scared.
The four horsemen of my apocalypse.
Anger.
Disbelief.
Guilt.
Fear.
Against the cold, gray sky of a storm March morning, the Four Horsemen rode again.
My apologies to Grantland Rice.
My apologies to my children and grandchildren.
In his day, the dean of American sportswriters.