ANGER

The incident I witnessed recently at LAX is surely one that is repeated countless times on a daily basis throughout the United States. We are an angry people, and there are those who are willing to cross the line from anger into physical violence.

Here's what happened. A woman wearing a scarlet "Make America Great Again" baseball cap boarded our plane at JFK. Ellie and I reacted as you might expect--with anger and disgust--but chose to watch in silence as she took her seat alongside her husband. She had the right to advertise her political opinions.

She was still proudly displaying those opinions when we deplaned at LAX, where we saw her waiting at the luggage carousel. It was here that a young woman of color could not contain her fury, and started yelling the displeasure that many of us, surely, felt, but did not express. The husband responded protectively--as was appropriate--but with the kind of brute display of male physical superiority we see at televised Trump rallies. He confronted the protesting woman, his big chest thrust out, drowning out her shouts with his own and backing her, step by step, away, with the sheer bulk of his presence.

Alert to the potential danger, I shouted out to him to leave the woman alone, but neither one of them heard. Eventually, the silent disparagement of the gathering crowd put an end to the confrontation until, a few moments later, it resumed out on the curb. This time, at least, there was a distance that separated the couple from the young woman's fury as they climbed into a waiting car. And I was surprised to hear a couple of other distant voices join in to support them.

The young woman was wrong, of course. And right. I admired the courage with which she vented the anger that I myself chose to keep concealed. And I think that women have earned the right to shout, after centuries in which they have been constrained to whisper protest against the privilege and power of men. By the same token, though, that "deplorable" woman had earned the right to wear that vile symbol of everything Trump.

Is this what we have come to, as a country? What a sad, sad tale.