My audience is going to die before I do.

The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government.

Once or twice a day, I am enveloped inside what I like to call the Impenetrable Shield of Melancholy. This shield, it is impenetrable. Hence the name. I cannot speak. And while I can feel myself freeze up, I can't do anything about it.

Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.

However, displayed right alongside all the Confederate flag paraphernalia is a bunch of American flag merch – American flag place mats, patriotic “body crystals,” flag stickers you attach to your skin. Personally, I’m small-minded and literal enough that I see the two symbols as contradictory, especially in a time of war. But I fear that the consumer who buys a Confederate flag coffee cup, which she will then put on her American flag place mat, is the sort of sophisticated thinker who is open-minded enough that she is capable of hating blacks and Arabs at the same time.

Robert Todd Lincoln, a.k.a. Jinxy McDeath.

Assassins and presidents invite the same basic question: Just who do you think you are?