The blessed silence

I remember a thin, tall, blonde boy, back in high school, who’d set his tray on the table in the cafeteria, start talking – and he couldn’t stop; mocking a girl’s dress, a football player’s stammer, a math teacher’s hairdo he’d talk on and on.

Trump likes to talk too.

Morning, noon and night he’s talked on about how ‘the election was stolen’ then, whether he meant to or not, at his ‘Stop the Steal’ rally he dropped a match on a powder keg – but even after a hooded masked rioter ended up perched on Mike Pence’s chair atop the Senate podium Trump couldn’t stop talking, tweeting the next day the election was stolen.

Howls grew. Echoed. From both sides. Democrats impeached Trump. Another dose of angry politics.

When cannons stopped firing on the last day of World War I a soldier called it the blessed silence – ‘Lord, we could use a little of that blessing now.’