I never liked the circus. The clowns always scared me.
 
Which is why I’ve tried to stay away from the news. I’ve done a decent job relegating myself to the delivered Sunday newspaper, which I really only keep a subscription to because of the joy I get seeing Emma run down the long dirt driveway to pick it up. She lumbers back to me with the slobbery plastic-wrapped burrito, her body wiggling with such pride that I can’t help but smile.
 
Emma’s my dog, by the way, for any of you newcomers. Although an 8-year-old of any species should be able to do the job. Unless, of course, their parents do it for them, in which case their current man-cave or she-shed will have to be set up with a pull-out couch and fast internet connection for a future failure-to-launch scenario.
 
I made my way back into the big tent over the weekend, like many of you probably did, after hearing about the deadly circus happening in well-below freezing weather, complete with a protesting ICU nurse getting shot 10 times, including rounds to the back, after his legally-carried firearm had been removed. The immediate reaction by government ringleaders was that the nurse was intending to massacre law enforcement, that he was an assassin, and that he was a domestic terrorist.

Bring on the clowns.

Those claims have since proven to be outright lies, intended to deflect us from the truth we’ve watched unfold on video.

A truth whose source is neither right or left, but somewhere in the middle of all the inflammatory rhetoric that both political sides are bringing to the table. The media, party leaders, anyone spouting half-truths and urgent lies of convenience from either end of the rage spectrum…they’re all complicit in creating the conditions we’re seeing unfold. 
 
Which is why I never liked the circus. The clowns always scared me.