Brown angst during COVID

I am struggling to sit in the discomfort around how dis-empowered I feel learning about different policies, decisions, platforms, and attitudes in the American arena.  I think what hit home the hardest was reading an article about how prepared the senate was to fill a supreme court vacancy that has the potential of being vacated because Ruth Bader-Ginsburg was admitted into the hospital.  This access to malevolently driven aggression is not something I am familiar with.  I get quickly worked up over how hypocritical these Republican government officials demonstrate convenient ideals.  Then I listen to how armed Anglo citizens forced their way into government buildings to protest their state's orders to stay home.  I wonder how different it would be if Chicano armed men or Black armed men attempted the same patriotic display.  If that isn't enough I read more about the former National Security Advisor and how his once guilty plea was somehow undone.  All this privilege, looking a lot like Anglo privilege, sinks in and festers in my psyche.  

Then I find myself gripping the anger, looking at a picture of Mitch McConnel, wanting to participate in the adolescences of mocking his interesting appearance.  I let myself ruminate over the apparent prejudice, blatant hypocrisy, and certain impediments to economic justice.  I fortunately haven't stayed in this condition long.  I remind myself that McConnel sees some American value in his seemingly bigoted, and if not bigoted, then surely ethnocentric, vision for America.  And despite not having any immediate or direct control over this person's views, I do have authority to minimize his effect on my joy.  I will likely never know how harmless Michael Flynn's encounters with Russian diplomats are.  And yet my desire to see justice found isn't as important as understanding how to ensure that my greed never masquerades as my principle.  My anger towards a man named Mitch that I've never met, can't be more important than my cultural requirement to understand that Mitch is valuable and precious in some way, and it is my duty to seek it out.  So I have learned to watch the American experiment with humble eyes, a moderated anger, and hopeful sadness.