Slogging Through the Bile of Gall

There are pictures on social media of Jill Biden sitting a person or two away from Donald Trump and his new best friend Emmanuel Macron, the president of France at the reopening ceremony for Notre Dame.

I’m impressed that Macron has decided to co-opt Trump, feed him the compliments and attention he craves rather than give in to the histrionics and shunning that is reflexive for most normal adults who follow the news. It’s high level, master class manipulation and I admire that. Never having been the president of France or any other country, I was initially repulsed but then settled down to get the point. Macron wants Trump to love him. Maybe he thinks he can save NATO that way. He is probably right.

But back to Jill and her position in the pew a couple of people down from Macron. The word that comes to mind is galling. This is one of my favorite words, probably from having been overused in my career where I found myself in situations that were truly galling, from the word gall, defined in the American College Dictionary as follows: something very bitter or severe, bitterness of spirit, rancor, impudence, effrontery, bile.

So, when one is confronted with something that is galling, the impact is felt immediately in the gut. The determination of what’s galling and what isn’t is physical, not cerebral. I imagine Jill Biden is choking back the bile having to stand nearly next to a person who tried to overthrow the U.S. government just a few short years ago while Macron is smiling at him like a brother. It’s wild.

There are bigger issues to address. The future of Social Security, what will happen to immigrants, women’s rights, the list is nearly endless. We can’t get distracted by someone’s possibly hurt feelings. Except I think maybe there are several million people standing there with Jill, dealing with the same reflux and not having any Tums in our pockets, just having to soldier through the whole miserable mess.

What a slog this will be.