Sigh. I’m sitting at the bar of a restaurant in the small western Michigan village I moved to a few years ago. I’m listening to a bunch of white men at the bar make fun of masks and vaccines. I’m listening to them call people who care about taking precautions “pussies.” Homophobic and sexist all at once. They aren’t shy about it. They’re shouting, and some dudes at tables are (I’m not kidding) shouting “Amen.” Christians, of course, being assholes, which around here is par for the course.

I’m watching these same guys watch car-racing news on TV and finding some reason to jeer about Black Lives Matter. They’re spitting out BLM like it’s a slur instead of a moral goodness. They’re all guffawing and having a rib-slapping good time with their overt racism.

I ask myself how people can be this stupid, this hateful, this bigoted, all at the same time.

I have no idea. I can’t figure out the answer.

But I’m surrounded by disgusting people and see no clear route to making any kind of positive change.