these are not normal times, however. we are living in a particular py tense age. the country is deeply divided. we are in the midst of this pandemic. what we need is people to calm down. the bitter divisions that we see in this country are exacerbated by this tendency to exaggerate and do so grossly. "the washington post" the other day had a headline about the omicron variant break in the southeast saying it's going to be a firestorm. fire storms kill people. what we seem to know about omicron so far is that it's not particularly deadly. if it's deadly at all. oso, that's the kind of overstatement i'm talking about. but it has a lot of people really frightened, tense, on edge. and of course donald trump didn't help this with his wild claims about these thefts of the 2020 election by voter fraud on election day. this is the atmosphere we are living. in bennie thompson of the january 6th committee say would he go came critically close to losing our democracy. one of those soundbites that you