DEAR EDITOR:

Recently there was a rally in the capital to support the J6, those arrested in the Jan. 6 illegal protests in the Capitol. Most of the J6, I suppose, protested out of high spirits and pro-Trump fever, with a few being followers of that QAnon entity, and maybe other theories of mysterious wire-pulling elites.

The J6 bears a resemblance to the medically alienated, the new and little understood constituency that’s animating mask aversion and vaccine hesitancy.

Both are expressing, in my opinion, an overheated stew of unheard grievances that finds no purchase in the major parties, so we end up with pressure relief by means of Kevlar-vested dudes in the Capitol and mask- and vax-bashing at school board meetings.

Those unheard grievances? They can be immeasurably difficult to articulate. At the most local level, for example, how do you complain about a newly striped crosswalk with freshly installed pedestrian-assist lights at an intersection so dangerous that nearby residents know to cross 50 feet away? Do you talk geometry, blind curves and vehicle sightlines to the traffic engineer or PR guy who’s revving up to tell you, politely, buzz off?

Get a big notebook or clutch of legal pads and write down those observations about the anomalies, irregularities and strangenesses you see around you. Let the evidence speak, ask questions later.

Your journey will take you down the rabbit hole to a weirded-out America, where Big Business and government and other enablers work hand in glove to pursue their goals while feigning arm’s-length relationships with one another to throw the deplorables off the scent. Is there nothing remarkable in your writing, or are you seeing the America called by the brilliant and quirky essayist Ron Unz “criminally corrupt, incompetent and just crazy?”

JACK LABUSCH