I watched an excellent Q&A with Pete Buttigieg at Northeastern (video below) and was feeling a glimmer of hopefulness about life in these United States.

Then I made the mistake of checking my Twitter feed and saw the despicable post by the current occupant of the White House. It was clear that he was inciting violence against a member of Congress, and by extension against anyone of the Muslim faith.

Next, I made the further mistake of tweeting a response expressing disgust, anger, horror…the list of words/feelings is a long one, but that’s the ballpark. I was surprised that my comment received replies. And there were a number of individuals who felt they needed to respond by calling me an ignorant libtard and other less complimentary names. There ensued a useless tangle of jibs and jabs.

One of the people was a QAnon believer and I felt like I was in the presence of a rare species of mammal. Maybe not-so-rare, though. The QAnon conspiracy theory certainly seems something that Trump is working to exploit. And there are more believers than you’d expect (a dire commentary on the state of our educational system).

Right on cue (get it?!) my new Twitter ‘friend’ posted popular QAnon memes about The Storm and The Great Awakening — both staples of these credulous kool-aid drinking pizza-eaters.

So what do we do?

Discussion is not possible. Arguing is not productive. Words have little meaning, ideas no traction, and facts hold no sway. It’s like we live in different universes. How do we ever come together?

Prolly time to remove Twitter from my ken again. I always come away from these encounters feeling diminished, discouraged and, too often, also afraid. Better to go for a walk or meditate or read or watch a video of a sane candidate or donate to a good cause…or something.