When I sat down to write a quip about the letters to Senator Katie Britt’s (R-AL) office from a Venezuelan family trying to self deport, I immediately felt drained. The Texas Immigration Law Council, along with Tim Miller of The Bulwark, is getting the word out that instead of being on a plane back to Venezuela weeks ago, having properly followed the steps to self deport, the Revilla-Gervis family was instead interned. The couple has a seven-year-old daughter, who reportedly speaks of wanting to die, and the pregnant mother is allegedly receiving no medical care.

The story makes me grateful my athletic regimen includes striking and kicking bags and pads and showing people how to take a would-be assailant to the ground. I’m having no difficulty imagining assailants to take to the ground.

This report also makes me achingly tired of the never-ending pool of news items like these in the land that was gifted the Statue of Liberty. It continues to be hard to absorb that this institutionalized cruelty is a failing president’s winning issue. The cruelty does not seem likely to stop as long as it is.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this story and independent verification, while recovering from other recent events that are almost as draining, starting with the frightened (of MAGA) Senator Bill Cassidy’s (R-LA) completely unsurprising decision to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General. The annoyance of that pathetic decision was followed by dejection at an embarrassingly deferential interview of Blanche, where there was minimal pushback against the lies he told about the president’s behavior and his own willingness to be complicit.

Then, there’s the perpetual irritation engendered by the thoroughly narcissistic Commander-in-Chief’s repeated attempts to renovate the entire nation’s capital, especially the White House and the Kennedy Center. He wants to put his name on every piece of the city he admires, no matter what the courts say. Meanwhile, U.S. service members fighting the never-ending war that the chief redecorator said he would never wage need supplies, relief or a lasting ceasefire. They would probably settle for some compassion from the president to start with.

For head-scratching drama outside of U.S. borders, I had Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to accept Hamas’s terms for disarming: no more strikes on Gaza and a pullback of Israeli troops to the yellow line. In other words, Hamas wants Israel to meet the terms agreed to in September of last year before handing over its weapons. What a novel idea!

To the rescue was Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who is not a member of the U.S. government. He tried to persuade Netanyahu to test Hamas’s willingness to disarm by backing the IDF troops up to the previously agreed upon line, rather than rejecting the disarmament offer outright, ahead of Israel’s October election. I may have missed it, but I don’t think Kusher was able to save the day.  There’s no agreement on whether Hamas demilitarization will happen before, during or after an Israeli troop pullback. There is at least a “working group” on the health and sanitation issues for the residents of Gaza.

Immigration internment camps, peace plans with no peace, a Justice Department with a more-reserved Roy Cohn as its head, lawmakers with no backbone, inappropriate and unwanted renovation of a nation with corrupt branding to boot, and a beneficiary of the family grift as the unofficial head of the diplomatic corps in the Middle East. It would all be the best soap opera ever written if it weren’t so real.

The root of news is “new,” but so little these days actually is. An author and editor can keep choosing different jackets for the book, but does it really matter if the book itself is as unchanging as a bible?

From the perspective of one who could not be a cog in the corporate news machine during this withering time in history, who did not want to be obligated by paycheck to keep the insanity on at all times, writing about the crimes, corruption and inhumanity of the main players in public life these days is like reviewing heinous outfits on equally unattractive, broken mannequins. What I want is for the dressers to think it best to get new mannequins, along with the new clothes – or for the window shoppers to somehow fire the dressers! That’s where the anxiety, anticipation, adrenaline and even joy of election news coverage comes in. That, for now, seems most worthy to quip about.

To be clear, quips will not be on election news only, but for this fall, they will be more election-centric. For all of my other streams of consciousness about the politics of the personal in these challenging times, look to the Columns page – and keep an eye out for the return of Clips!