May Day Parade

Bad ideas are like children, they keep bouncing up and down on the bed.

These children, I’m afraid, have formed a mob. So many of them have taken a place in the celebrity parade line that it’s become difficult if not impossible to identify one from another, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Ayn Rand, or tell the difference between the members of the Supreme Court from the National Football League. The mob is surprisingly nimble, they’re able to storm the US Capitol as if they’d reached the end of the historic 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, a serious, consequential political endeavor, and have instead shown up on the steps of that building in Washington D.C. across the street from the White House, exercising their right to infantile behavior, led by a clutch of circus performers (aka clowns).

People in the mob prefer to believe almost anything, and so often act as children act, without considering context, content, or consequence. Republicans are responsible for our failure, no Democrats are, no the Independent Party is to blame, siphoning off voters from the left and right, even those who don’t vote.

I like children, most of them anyway, and for a few minutes I amuse myself by watching this mob perform the kind of tricks little kids like to play while jumping up and down on their beds just before bedtime. Once in a while a jumping child will look over their shoulder to see if at least one of the adults in the room is watching.

Small mob of Calla lillies, backyard, San Francisco, May 1, 2024. Photo by author.