If I hadn’t used the pinch test so many times that I’m literally black and blue, I’d be somewhere near the end of my REM stage, identifying the events of this week as whack-a-doodle dreams that thankfully, I’d awaken from at any moment.  But…owwww!, (tried one last time), this is the reality of the world according to Trump who, in his final days as the mad king, has decided to burn the palace down.  He is an amoral con man, whose entire life has been about stoking the flames of hatred and suspicion, then shamelessly profiteering off of the chaos he creates; a smarmy, illiterate buffoon who merely five years ago was a humorless court jester, making outrageous, false claims about immigrants, Birther-ism, the Deep State and the unfair plight of working-class white America.  He poked and prodded and rallied and MAGAed crowd upon angrier crowd of hate-filled losers and unscrupulous opportunists and assembled a cadre of some of the worst humans since Hitler’s inner circle.  His adoring, overly adrenalinated minions became the Them that we all, (including Them), were taught to be the bad guys, and those bad guys listened to his lies and on Wednesday, taking up his cause, They stormed the seat of American Democracy and tried to tear it down.  There were colluders:  Congressmen and Senators and quite probably law enforcement and other officials tasked to provide safety and prevent insurrection.  When it subsided, and the tear gas cleared, and the dead were removed, and the legislating bodies reconvened, there were speeches after vainglorious speeches, many by the facilitators of this treasonous President, playing to the can’t-look-away TV audience…and the abettors’ ingenuous pleas for unity and civility sickened me to my core.  They are Them.  They don’t get to stand up after the ‘gone-too-far’ and spout mocked indignation and righteousness in a futile attempt to reclaim their souls from the Devil.  There must be consequences!