ODD FELLOWS -- THE ROAD BACK

Insurrection. 

Impeachment. 

Inauguration.

If a year ago you had asked anyone what the chances were of those three words appearing in a sentence that would accurately describe the two weeks leading to January 20, 2021, you would have been told you needed professional help.  

The conventional Republican wisdom at that time was that Trump was an over-the-top but ultimately harmless showman,  always ready to walk to a line but willing to cross only those that either weren't all that important to voters in the first place (e.g., proper "presidential" speech or etiquette) or that in crossing he could later fudge as to their meaning (e.g., his "fine people on both sides" comments in Charlottesville in 2017 or his attacks on the Mueller investigation, the former of which he defended as a reference to the non-Nazi statue lovers in that crowd, the latter of which he escaped by turning self-enforced prosecutorial boundaries into legal exonerations).  

Even the nightmare that was Trump's response to the pandemic was spun toward some form of acceptable -- the denial, ridiculous pressers and idiotic messaging (ingesting bleach, for example) offset by a vaccine developed at warp speed.

On this view, Democrats would, as was their wont, overreact, a consequence of both their unwillingness to ever accept Trump as president and an identity politics that made it impossible for them to appreciate both the level of anger outside their metropolitan and suburban base and the fact that Trump's nastiness had actually connected with a lot of those who were angry.  Also on this view, Trump had delivered for his voters with a growing (pre-pandemic) economy, tax cuts, a cadre of conservative courts, and a level of frustration among his opponents -- "owning the liberals", as it were -- that more than made up for his foul-mouthed narcissism and compulsive lying.

Not to be outdone, the conventional Democratic wisdom back then was that Trump was a pathological liar and corrupt narcissist not remotely interested in or capable of doing the job but absolutely bent on retaining it at any price and regardless of consequence to the country at large.  

In their mind, his attempt to bribe Ukraine's president to announce a phony investigation of Joe Biden was emblematic of what his narrow and legalistic escape from Mueller's investigation had wrought -- a dishonest and unhinged megalomania. And his subsequent inability to competently manage the nation's response to the coronavirus pandemic, indeed, his distortion and politicization of it, confirmed their worst fears.

Conventional wisdom is conventional because in many respects it is correct.  And that may have been true of the competing conventional takes on Trump as well.  The conventions themselves, at least in their less extreme form, were not necessarily at odds with each other.  It was at least possible that over time Trump's dishonesty, narcissism and incompetence -- all Democratic tropes -- might have (more or less) peacefully co-existed with an economy running hot on auto-pilot while conservative judges in the background reined in perceived overreach and expanded the scope of their favored constitutional rights located in the Second Amendment and in the religion clause of the First.  

Trump defenders even had a practical rule on how one got there.

You had to, they said, take Trump "seriously but not literally."  Those who did could navigate Trump's verbal sewer and disordered psychology on their way to a more or less normal politics of competing interests where one side -- the GOP -- occasionally (but not always) won and the other occasionally (but not always) lost.  Those, however, who violated the rule -- who took him literally but not seriously -- would wind up increasingly frustrated, victims of their own unwillingness to concede that they were often as over the top as the President they -- so it was said -- never accepted as legitimate in the first place.

And then came January 6.

And that whole model just blew up.

It didn't blow up simply or only because the Trump-induced march on and riot at the US Capitol that day was an attempted coup.   It was that, of course.  But it was also a lot more than that.  And the more, hard as it may be to fathom, is probably even worse than the attempted coup.  

Discussing Hegel, Marx once said that "world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice . . . the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."  The attempted coup on January 6, however, varied that theme.  It was tragedy and farce all at once. 

Thousands stormed through police barricades, smashing windows, trashing offices, proclaiming electoral lies and asserting a patriotic superiority borne of both their own arrogance and an ignorance cultivated and harvested by the nation’s 45th President.  Many were bent on stopping the electoral vote count then in progress.  Others wanted to kidnap or kill elected officials, including the Speaker and the Vice-President.   In their attempt at an illegitimate putsch, they told the police "There's a million of us out there, and we are listening to Trump -- your boss." They breached the chambers of both legislative branches and rifled through the papers of the legitimate Representatives and Senators who only moments earlier had to be quickly ferried to secure locations because their lives were at risk.  Five people died.  One was shot trying to break into the House.  Another, a police officer, died from injuries sustained in the assault. Hundreds of Congressional staff sat terrorized in offices listening in abject fear to the outrage just beyond their locked doors.

Those tragedies, however, were intertwined with absolute farce.  

In the truest sense of that word.

Comic buffoonery, crude characterization and ludicrous improbability.

Milling about in the Senate, one rioter suggested that "while we're here we might as well set up a government." Why not?  Maybe the half-dressed guy sporting horns, face paint and animal fur could be appointed the Secretary of Costumes. Another looking through papers on his desk said "Cruz would want us to do this, so I think we're good."  Even better.   A sitting Senator with his authority still intact blessing the coup. 

Others were confused.  

"This don't look big enough," said one traipsing through the smaller Senate chamber. "This can't be the right place."  He was obviously a victim of too much internet, where the enemy is always bigger.  

At one point, giving voice to the absurdity around him, a cop calmly asked a group of rioters whether there was "any chance I could get you guys to leave the Senate wing?"  Apparently there wasn't, even though one of those illegals looked incredulously at the same cop and said "You should be stopping us."  In response, the cop pointed out that there were five of them, including the horned guy, but only one of him.  

Another selfie by the horned guy provoked another exchange. This one was of the cop-as-parent, rioter-as-child variety: "Now that you've done that," said the officer, "can I get you to walk out of the room, please."

He did.

He was arrested later in the week.

For more than being a jerk.

But for at least that as well.

About a year ago, a very smart friend who is an investment banker by day, accomplished historian by night, and local official in between, posed a question at dinner.  Apropos of the current American political scene, he asked "when did we start doing stupid?" I immediately responded:  "1980".  At first he appeared startled.  But then he reprised Ronald Reagan's famous line about "trees caus[ing] pollution" and we proceeded to congratulate ourselves in tracing a straight line from some of the Gipper's more famous gaffes through voodoo economics, non-existent WMD in Iraq, and Sarah Palin's word salad, leading to that champion of rank dishonesty himself, Donald Trump.  

Today, stupid has taken a far more insidious form than the occasional gaffe from an otherwise genial chief executive. Over 70% of Republicans actually believe the 2020 election was stolen.  There is nothing behind this claim, not a single fact that supports it, other than Donald Trump's lie -- uttered daily since election day -- that it was.  And that is all it has taken. That lie, like all his lies, was ingested by Trump supporters and their numbers then created the background for invented efforts to manufacture some patina of support by hundreds who should have known better -- the Giulianis, Cruzes, Hawleys and 130 or so Republican House members who decided to contest Arizona's and Pennsylvania's uncontestable electoral college votes on January 6.  Meanwhile, a mob -- clad in their flak jackets, helmets, horns and MAGA hats -- tried to take down the government all in the service of that lie.

Pace President Biden, the road out of this mess will require much more than unity. 

And pace President Lincoln, it will also require much more than the "better angels of our nature" summoned from the “mystic chords of memory".

My suggestion is that we try intelligence.

Which in the past has proven useful.

And from which there are small signs of progress even today.

Two days after the riot, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram took down Trump's social media accounts. And not since Samson's hair was cut has power dissipated so rapidly.  One survey reported that the amount of "misinformation” about the election declined by over 70% in the days that followed, and the two weeks after January 6 were characterized by something not seen from Trump's White House in the past 206 -- relative silence.  

This is a space in which sanity can begin to reclaim at least a part of the public dialogue.  

The problem with Trump as Twitter President was that he could always suck all the oxygen out of the room with his latest outrage.  Those outrages had to be reported and reacted to and analyzed by the media, and whenever anyone suggested some form of benign neglect in the interest of progress (or even a semblance of rationality), there was always the rejoinder that he was -- after all -- President and that journalists (of whatever stripe)  had a duty to disseminate what he was saying.  Without Twitter, Trump did not lose the right to be heard.  

But he did lose the opportunity to mainline lies unfiltered into the veins of the body politic.

Intelligence, in other words, works.

For the sake of resurrecting intelligence as a sought-after characteristic of public discourse, it is also important that the impeachment trial of Trump go forward.  

In the weeks to come, Republicans will argue that any such effort will be foolish at best or illegal at worst.  The latter claim is almost certainly false as ex-officials have been impeached in the past and the potential consequences of presidential impeachment -- which include a lifetime ban from holding any office of "honor, trust or profit" in the United States -- themselves contemplate the need for that possibility with the chief executive. 

As to the former, the argument is that impeachment will merely delay any effort at unity by solidifying the divisive commitments of America's competing tribes.  On this view, those who support Trump will treat him as a martyr and double down on his electoral fictions, the trial of which will at the very least re-broadcast them, and those who don't will meet the same fate they met last January in the form of another Senate acquittal.

I don't think so.

An impeachment trial is the only venue in which both Trump and his enablers can be held responsible. And, for a number of reasons, the chance they may escape should not become an excuse for short-circuiting that hearing.  For the same reasons, those now assuming an acquittal may very well be counting eggs before they are hatched.  At least a half dozen Republican senators, including their leader Mitch McConnell, appear open to conviction today and there is no guarantee ten more won't find their way to that result once the evidence is heard.

Trump incited a violent insurrection.  

He sent forth a mob to kill the constitutionally-required work of the first branch of the government in order to insure his continued but illegitimate control of the second branch of the government.  He and his seconds are now defending his January 6 rally speech by claiming that it never demanded or approved of violence and in fact at one point specifically sanctioned only "peaceful" protest.  

That defense has to be heard and refuted.

Because it is both false and dangerous.  

It is false because you cannot spend months inviting thousands to Washington DC for the express purpose of reversing non-existent electoral theft; fully understand that the group you summon will be (illegally) armed; literally observe them outfitted for battle as you speak; tell them to march on the Capitol while instructing them that they will "never take back [their] country with weakness";  and then pretend it was not your fault -- or your words -- that led to deadly violence merely because you sandwiched the word "peaceful" into what was otherwise an hour long jeremiad of the lies you have been spouting for three months.  And you certainly cannot do that if you are Donald Trump, having preached unmitigated aggression from the presidential pulpit for four years and having told rally goers in the past to bust heads.  

And then there is the overriding issue of danger.

The Roman Republic -- from which much of our own governmental architecture was inspired if not directly drawn -- began to collapse when violence became an accepted method of political combat.  That occurred in the late second and early first century BC as candidates for the two annual consul positions discovered they could command armies loyal to themselves rather than the republic and then fight or leverage their way to political power on the back of brute force.

January 6 was a test run to see if such an approach might gain traction here in the US.  

For Trump and the more violent extremists who stormed the Capitol that day, the hope was that a demonstration of armed strength would in fact coerce others -- most particularly, Vice President Pence -- into declaring the recent election illegitimate and thus force Republican state legislatures in a half dozen swing states to switch their state's electoral votes from Biden to Trump.  Had it succeeded, America would have ceased being a republic for the same reason Rome did.  Might would have made right.  Elections would have become irrelevant.  

For years after violence became a feature of its politics, Rome preserved its republican forms.  Consuls, praetors, tribunes and magistrates were elected and Senators appointed.  But none of that mattered.  Because long before Augustus, the republic had died.  January 6 could have been a similar crossroads for us and at the very least should therefore be a reminder.  

This experiment in republican government is fragile.  

It is by no means inevitable.  

Ben Franklin wasn't kidding when he told that inquiring lady in Philadelphia in 1787 that the founders had given them a republic "if they could keep it."  Keeping it  relies on what they thought of as civic virtue and you and I call good faith and basic honesty. It also requires a willingness to compromise and an eternal preference for ballots over bullets . . . 

And bullies.

America needs a re-boot. It needs to exorcise Trump's demon notion that truth either does not exist or does not matter.  There are no "alternative facts". It also needs to re-establish its republican bona fides. That may not occur even if the impeachment trial goes forward. But it definitely will not occur if it does not. If that happens, poltical violence will have escaped consequence.  Another Trump at another time will take another run at her.  

And next time . . .

The clowns may decide to stay home.

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., America's 46th President, thus stands athwart a moment in history.  It is a multi-dimensional moment. A virus still plagues us.  Our politics divides us. And an insurrection almost ended us.  The capital (and Capitol) from which he delivered his Inaugural Address today was rimmed by 25,000 troops from the National Guard, there to preclude any reprise of January 6, and the mall he faced was flooded with flags, not people, in deference to Covid.

Since election day last November, Joe Biden had struck all the right notes.  He has been calm, deliberate and forthright -- the un-Trump as it were.  

Today he was all that and more. 

To the "riotous mob [who] thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people, to stop the work of our democracy, to drive us from this sacred ground," he repeated the simple truth -- "It did not happen." In a "crucible for the ages, . . . America [had] risen to the challenge. The people [had] been heard, and . . . heeded."  

To the country, he then made a simple pledge.  On his watch, mob rule "will never happen.  Not today.  Not tomorrow.  Not ever."  And then another pledge: "I will always level with you. I will defend the Constitution.  I'll defend democracy.  I'll defend America."

He offered a laundry list of “the foes we face, anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness.” As expected, his prescribed antidote was “unity”.  But not unity as a “foolish fantasy”.  “[T]he forces that divide us are deep and they are real,” he said, “But . . . they are not new.” “History, faith and reason show us the way of unity . . .  We can treat each other with dignity . . . We can . . . stop the shouting [and] end [our] uncivil war . . . There is truth and there are lies."

What will all of that look like?

Joe Biden is not elusive.  In fact, he is as easy to find as the Main Streets that produced him, the parents that guided him, the nuns that taught him, the ambitions that seized him, and the tragedies that confronted him.  He knows “there’s no accounting for what fate will deal you.”  There are “some days when you need a hand”, others when you’re “called to lend” one.  We're in this together because we have to be.

Even when we do not want to be.

Joe Biden is also not particularly eloquent. So today he left the eloquence to an elderly priest and a 22-year-old poet. The priest reminded us that “Dreams are built together”, the poet that “there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it/ If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

Biden is brave enough.

Are we?

THE TRUTH IS NOT NOISY

When he was falsely accused of covering up Cardinal McCarrick's decades-ago abuse of seminarians and minors, Pope Francis told reporters at his first press availability after the charge that he would have nothing to say about it.  He told them they were all "responsible journalists" who could make their own judgments based on the facts and that, at some point in the future, he might comment.  

In the months that followed, the truth came out.  The Pope had not known of McCarrick's crimes, had immediately started the investigative process that led to McCarrick's laicization -- or removal from the priesthood -- once he was told of them, and also had not refused to enforce prior penalties against McCarrick (which had been privately requested by Pope Benedict XVI but ignored by McCarrick and unknown to Francis).

In his morning homilies shortly after the false charge had been made, the Pope embraced the notion of discernment.  "The truth is meek. The truth is silent.  The truth is not noisy," he said, and "lies . . . destroy the unity of a family, of a people."  The antidote is often silence. This is not to be confused with passivity or cynicism.  Years before, in a 1990 essay, a then Father Bergoglio explained, in the words of Austin Ivereigh, that "silence allows the different spirits to be revealed.  In a time of tribulation, that is never easy: in the electric storm of claims and counterclaims, truth and lies get fused, and everyone claims noble motives."  

Eventually, however, truth outs.  

Lies refute themselves.

But we have to let them do so.

The truth can be preached or revealed. 

But it cannot be forced on anyone

It has to come to them.

Wednesday afternoon, as a joint session of Congress began the largely ceremonial task of counting the electoral college votes for President and Vice-President that had been previously delivered to it  by the states, thousands of angry Trump supporters descended upon the Capitol, breached rather flimsy security barriers and a not particularly well organized police response, and then proceeded to vandalize offices and terrorize legislators in a ginned up effort to either stop the vote count or otherwise deliver to Donald Trump the second term he lost but has insisted -- now for months  and without any evidence whatsoever -- was stolen from him.  

Since November 3, Trump has insanely but repeatedly asserted that he won the election "in a landslide" despite having lost the popular count by more than seven million votes and not having come remotely close in the electoral college.  

He has invented claims that hundreds of thousands of illegal votes were cast for his opponent by dead people, non-registered citizens from other states and imposters; that digital technology was manipulated to count ballots for Biden; that poll workers triple-counted and otherwise created phony Biden ballots; and that legislative and administrative changes making it easier to vote by mail in this year of pandemic were themselves illegal.  

As to the first three of these claims, Trump and his attorneys have offered no persuasive evidence at all to support them and neither the courts which have heard them nor the state election officials forced to investigate them have found any.  As to the last, the legislated and administrative changes were legal and upheld by the courts.

During this entire period, Trump's tactics have become increasingly more unhinged. 

And dangerous. 

In November and early December, he lobbied Wayne County officials in Michigan to not certify Biden-heavy vote precincts and later asked state legislators to appoint his electors instead of the actual winners.  On December 20, he discussed imposing martial law in order to have the election re-run in selective states he lost.  Last week, he spent an hour on the phone with Georgia's Secretary of State asking that official to find the 11,780 votes needed to overtake Biden in that state.   And yesterday, at a rally with thousands of MAGA-hatted, Trump-flag waving supporters he had begged to show up in Washington DC on the day of the official electoral vote count, Proud Boys, neo-Nazis and QAnon conspiracists among them, he told them to march on the Capitol.  

"We will never give up," he said at the rally. Milking the lies he has told for months, he claimed “You don't concede when there's theft involved."  He asserted -- again falsely -- that "All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to recertify, and we become president"; in fact, Pence had no authority to do any such thing. And then he told them to "walk down" to the Capitol "to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women,” the ones willing to do his bidding.  For the others unwilling to do his bidding, he had different advice. "You have to show strength," he said, "and you have to be strong."

So they marched to the Capitol.

Breached the barricades.

And went inside.

Though for most it probably counted more as a show of feral idiocy than strength, a pipe bomb was later found in the Capitol (as were pipe bombs outside both the Republican and Democratic National Committee offices in the Capitol neighborhood), windows and furniture were smashed, and both the Speaker's and others' offices were ransacked.  For the first time ever, a Confederate flag flew in the Rotunda.  Or at least "through" it, the flag carried casually like a cheerleader's half-time totem. A cocky, middle-aged poseur later identified as Richard Barnett was photographed boots up on one of the Speaker's desks.  Others were photographed loitering in the Speaker's chair in the House chamber and in the presiding officer's chair in the Senate.

As with Trump himself, much of the activity inside the Capitol was bravado and performance.  

The halls rang with deafening shouts of "Stop the Steal", the mob's go-to lie that was created and has been flamed by Trump for the past three months. At other times they yelled "Our House", an ironic claim of ownership in view of the fact that they were pretty much trashing the place. Later in the day, as the Capitol was emptied and order restored, one obnoxious trespasser told cameras that the "Capitol police did not take back the Capitol.  We gave it back."  Another announced that they had "stopped the vote".  

Much of the activity, however, was more serious. 

Apart from the property destruction and sheer terror created as they tried to breach interior space, the mob included leaders from the Proud Boys, one of whom is part of a group called "Murder the Media"; members of the National Socialist Club, a neo-Nazi group; and QAnon supporters, a conspiracist sect that claims the Democrats worship Satan and abuse children.  Journalists who remained inside reported at least one part of the mob looking for Vice President Pence in order to kill him.  Others reported blood and feces on statues and vile epithets uttered against Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Schumer.  One guy was wearing a "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt.

Over eighty were arrested.  Five people died.

Though Trump himself issued two statements while the Capitol was under siege, neither condemned the lawbreakers.

In the aftermath, there were some truth tellers but also a lot of "noble" claimants fusing "truth and lies" in the "electric storm of claims and counterclaims" that a handful of Trumpists had turned the pro forma vote count into at Trump's or his putative base's (and all of the nutjobs who had earlier trashed the place's) insistence.  

Of the former, Mitt Romney continued to shine.  Addressing the Senate after it returned to debate objections to the vote count, he berated Trump.  "What happened at the U.S.Capitol today was an insurrection," he said, "incited by the President of the United States."  Earlier, seething with anger in the secure location to which Senators had been removed when the Capitol was breached, he yelled at the Republicans advancing Trump's electoral lies -- "This is what you've gotten, guys."  

Back on the floor, Romney punctured whatever was left of the claim only six Senators remained willing to support.  As he put it, pointing out the silliness of Sen. Cruz's ten-day audit demand to satisfy the disaffected, "No Congressional led audit will ever convince those voters [who believe the election was stolen], particularly when the President will continue to claim that the election was stolen.  The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. The truth is that President-elect Biden won this election.  President Trump lost."

Because, however, truth is not, as the Pope put it, noisy, the nobility caucus also had its say.  

Opposing an objection to Pennslyvania's vote, Sen. Pat Toomey said "We witnessed today the damage that can result when men in power and responsibility refuse to acknowledge the truth. We saw bloodshed because a demagogue chose to spread falsehoods and sow distrust of his own fellow Americans."  At the same time, Toomey admitted he had voted for the demagogue.  

Which begs a host of questions . . .

About Sen. Toomey.

He can ask them.

The rest of us should leave him alone.

For his part, a folksy Lindsey Graham said "Enough is enough," placing himself among the judges and elections officials who have ruled the election legitimate.  One of those rulings, by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, came in a 4-3 decision that the challenges in that state to absentee and early voting had come too late. Lindsey was OK with that: "If Al Gore could accept five-four he's not president," said Graham, "I can accept Wisconsin four to three."  

All fine.  

And noble.

But he also said that he and Trump had had "a helluva a journey . . . From my point of view, he's been a consequential president."

Unfortunately, Graham was right.

One of those consequences was a woman shot that afternoon in the Capitol.  

She later died.

Another was a Capitol Police Department officer who died Thursday evening from injuries sustained during the attack.

A little before 4 am on Thursday morning, Vice-President Pence announced the final electoral vote -- 306-232 in favor of Biden/Harris.  Joe Biden officially became President-Elect and Kamala Harris Vice President- Elect.  Immediately thereafter, Trump's press office tweeted out a statement (the President's own Twitter account had been suspended by the company because it thought, correctly, that he had incited violence).  The statement read "Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th".

This, of course, is just another lie.

The facts do not bear him out.

Later on Thursday, the noise continued.  

Former Attorney General Barr said that "orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable," and that Trump had "betray[ed] his office and supporters."  Former Chief of Staff and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly said that the Cabinet should exercise its right to remove Trump pursuant to the 25th Amendment.  Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, Trump's longest serving Cabinet member, resigned effective next Monday.  She called the assault on the Capitol by Trump's supporters "entirely avoidable."  

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger, and the former Chief of Staff and current envoy to Northern Ireland, Mick Mulvaney, resigned immediately, as did the First Lady's Chief of Staff and the White House's social secretary.  For his part, Mulvaney said that Trump had had a "long list of successes" but that "all of that went away yesterday".  Meanwhile, potential resignations were reported involving other national security officials, including National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien.

Throughout the day on Thursday, there were calls for Trump's removal pursuant to the 25th Amendment. Speaker Pelosi said that if the Vice President and Cabinet were not willing to take this step, her caucus was prepared to impeach Trump again.  The Wall Street Journal issued an evening editorial calling on the President to resign.  Around 7 pm, Trump issued a video statement.  In it, he for the first time condemned the mob, promised they would be held accountable, called for healing, acknowledged he would no longer be President come noon on January 20, and said he would work to insure a peaceful and orderly transition over the next thirteen days.  

David Gergen, who has over the years advised four presidents (from both parties), was appearing on CNN at the time the statement was broadcast.

When it was over, Gergen marveled at its sheer "chutzpah".

John Donvan is a college friend of mine.  He is also an ABC news journalist and over the course of a forty plus year career has been stationed at and covered the news from capitals around the world.  On Wednesday on Facebook, he posted video footage that came over his desk in London in 1981 of a coup attempt in Spain, where armed military had burst into Spain's newly created parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, and tried to stop it from voting to elect a new prime minister.  In recounting his reaction to the video at that time, he remembered feeling "so glad that [he] lived in a country where something crazy like that could never happen."

He then said no more.

Just arched his brow.

On the post, he wrote "In the end, no words".

The truth is not noisy.