On September 2, 1974, the Wall came down.

If you were around at the time, you understood the meaning at a glance. Garry Trudeau had drawn the wall in front of the White House, a reference to “stonewalling” on the Nixon tapes. Nixon resigned August 9; three weeks was the quickest a syndicated comic strip could acknowledge the event.

“Our long national nightmare is over,” Jerry Ford had said three weeks earlier, a line that might not have worn well, but felt right at the time. Watergate was consuming, consuming in a way we wouldn’t feel again for more than forty years. You couldn’t escape it.

And then it was past.

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Stan Lee, Marvel Comics’ Real-Life Superhero, Dies at 95 [Hollywood Reporter]

Twelve people died in a mass shooting Wednesday night.

Nobody noticed.

Okay, that’s unfair. The other people in the bar certainly noticed. Friends and family of the victims certainly noticed. Everyone around Los Angeles certainly noticed, which is how we noticed Thursday morning, the occasional LA-based tweet amongst a slew of other tweets not noticing.

The slaughter of twelve people in a bar Wednesday night was only a local story.

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No fucking clue, really. Feels like wind in the sails, a cleansing blue wave crashing upon our hellish red shores, but also feels like we’ve been here before, an easy confidence in the road ahead before driving off a cliff.

Shit can happen. Shit does happen. Shit has happened.

But while we’re deciding whether that light in the tunnel is really an oncoming train, you’re welcome to join our Midterm Election Open Thread Celebration/Wake/Emigration Helpline. We can do this revolution the easy way or the hard way, comrades.

Martian invasion fleet greeted as liberators: 10:1

NYT Needle declared health risk: 3:1

Thanksgiving upgraded to contact sport: Even

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We’re comfortable blaming Trump.

We’re comfortable blaming the politicians who support Trump.

We’re comfortable blaming the people who support Trump.

We’re comfortable blaming anyone who doesn’t recognize violence in political rhetoric, or who deliberately conflates colorful insults with incendiary language.

We’re comfortable blaming anyone who doesn’t take this shit seriously.

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We were going to express our indignation over an American resident being executed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, but then we were reminded of our indignation over a newsroom being shot up, over massacres in schools and churches, over a woman being run down by a neo-Nazi.

We were reminded of our indignation over children being stolen from their parents by our government, and our indignation over our government’s deliberate carelessness in returning them.

We were reminded that our President once bragged he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing supporters.

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