I just saw some more of the footage from the Trump rally where he stood on stage and played music for almost 40 minutes. I suppose many of you have seen it too.

Surreal.

And painful.

It’s the pain that sticks with you. Not just your own but also the pain of the people gathered together there in that moment. I have an uncomfortable empathy for people who are having their foolishness exposed for all the world to see.

When you watch the faces of the people on that stage and in the crowd you cringe. It really does show a group of folks who are cognitively adrift. I am moved to feel sorry for them as the dissonance they are experiencing is so clearly demonstrated in their expressions.

No one knows what to do. The host Kristi Noem (killer of puppies…,what?) is left getting wagged by her own tail. It’s hard to have complete sympathy for them as they have voluntarily put themselves in that moment. But how desperate must you be to cling to this type of perverse hope? To rally around such a silly and hateful lunatic?

As we ask ourselves, for the thousandth time, is this real? Is this person really in contention to be our leader?…we acquire a cognitive dissonance of our own.

It wears.