Hidden From View

 I have it on very good authority that one cannot cause a pot of water to boil by staring at it. 

I re-learned this immtable fact, save for the stray Kryptonian wisegu.y who might beg to differ, by sitting in front of a screen for several hours last Friday night, watching a Livestream of a crew of workers assemble a scaffold. Along with several hundred thousand others, I started at my computer screen in hopes of seeing something more: The removal of the Orange Worst's name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 

Crowds began to arrive before noon on June 12 at the actual site where the defenestration of the MAGAt in chief was taking place. Onlookers were initially quiet, but as the deadline of midnight on the east coast approached, those who had committed to be there when the defacement of a national landmark was eradicated grew more unruly. The expectation that the court order that had mandated the handful of words to be physically stricken from the record approached and then passed. 

I sat at my desk as I watched the minutes tick by. A rainstorm blew through Washington DC, hampering the efforts of the workers for a spell, then they returned to their task. Surely but slowly. It became increasingly apparent that there was another force beside a court order and weather involved. There was this matter of waiting for the paperwork to be completely crossed and dotted with no room for last minute appeals. 

Shortly after midnight arrived, the crew began to drape their very impressive scaffold with an equally impressive white and blue tarp. Not American Flag Blue as some might have expected, but a screen to keep the crowd from seeing what was inevitably going to take place. 

It was at this point, approaching eleven o'clock in my neighborhood, that I took my leave of the situation. The schadenfreude I was hoping to experience would have to wait. The minor exultation I might have enjoyed would have to be of the more vicarious sort. The next morning, I reflected on the mild assurance that there are still limits to the authority of the Orange Worst. Even if those limits need to be shielded by a tarp.