This absurd spectacle provided a brief respite from Trump's horror show

Last week I watched the Attorney General of the United States sneer at the rule of law, and felt sick. I’ve been a federal trial lawyer for decades, and there was the titular head of American law defecating on it to applause from Fox News, who called Pam Bondi’s performance “entertaining.”

Our legal system has never been perfect, but pre-Trump, it was the best in the world except for the Scandinavians (who passed Americans on the evolutionary chart years ago). Stuck where we are on our slow-moving timeline, watching Bondi serve up contempt as surrogate for legal accountability, trashing the only thing I’ve ever believed in, instilled a grief I haven’t been able to name or shake.

Bondi’s refusal to answer basic questions from members of Congress who have a statutory duty to ask them confirmed that, through Trump, we have entered a state of wholly performative politics. A curated reality show played exclusively for Fox and right-wing media, there is no government accountability under Trump, only deflection. There is no substance, only content.

The administration refuses to address necessary questions, instead ambushing anyone who asks them, or delivering fanciful fiction. Hair, makeup and volume matter, substance doesn’t. This is the same fraudulent strategy that Trump, an economically illiterate man, used to sell his economics acumen to gullible Americans despite six corporate bankruptcies.

Reaching back to a better world

What Americans are experiencing as a result of Trump’s conman reality — extreme distrust, polarization, vicious cruelty meted out as content, is not normal. We can’t let it become normal, or we’ll start to believe this is who we are. It isn’t.

After watching Bondi’s congressional “testimony,” in search of a palate cleanser, I looked for comic relief in, of all places, the very uncomedic state of Florida. I was in Wilton Manors, the celebrated gay mecca of the south, and went to see a play written and directed by Ronnie Larsen, the celebrated king of gay theater.

The New York Times clocked Larsen’s rare talent for mixing raunch with research, while other critics praise his genius at balancing comedy with deep pathos. I was drowning in pathos, searching for an antidote, and I found it.

Only truth can deliver us from despair

Larsen did not disappoint. His absurdly funny semi-autobiographical story of a young gay man searching for connection made me forget all about Bondi and the s--t-show playing out across Trump’s America.

It harkened back to The Actors, the first Larsen play I saw in New York, one that turned me into a fawning fangirl. In The Actors, also autobiographical, a middle-aged man had recently lost both his parents and was estranged from his brother. He was so devastated by the loss, fighting despair and emotional isolation, that he hired three actors to come to his home several times a week to act out simulations of family life. He paid them to play games with him, share meals, and tuck him into bed, allowing him to remember feeling loved and the comforts of his childhood.

As heartbreaking as the plot itself was, parading our searing human need for love and connection, Larsen served it up with such soul-baring honesty it caught in my throat. Just when I was ready to break down from the familiarity, the recognition that we are all so vulnerable and at times desperately lonely, he’d break out a visual absurdity for relief: a kitchen cabinet stocked only with children’s cereal, a balding man in a Superman onesie. At all times, Larsen played himself as himself. At ease bearing his decidedly non-washboard belly, Larsen constantly says this is who I am. Unadorned.

The through line of a Larsen play is that when we reach soul-baring honesty with each other and with ourselves, flaws and all, a better and more dignified reality emerges.

Lies destroy; truth heals

After watching Bondi smack down the rule of law with deflection and snide dishonesty, Larsen was the medicine I needed. While this administration employs lies and obfuscation to dehumanize others, truth allows us to do the opposite, to see ourselves in strangers, to recognize their suffering.

Bondi delivered performative dishonesty where integrity was expected, while Larsen delivered integrity through honesty.

Bondi’s incompetence and failure — her sneers, her jabs, her dishonest refusal to acknowledge mistakes in her disastrous handling of the Epstein files, re-injured women who were trafficked and raped as children, commodities to a wealth class that will not protect them. It also dealt a severe blow to the American justice system, advancing Trump’s goal of dismantling it.

In his play, using only unvarnished honesty and humor, Larsen modeled a better way. He demonstrated the binding power of truth and reminded us that even in this hour of darkness, our better angels are still here.

Bondi’s performance marked how low we’ve fallen; Larsen’s showed us how to fly above it. Critics call Larsen a prolific stalwart of queer theatre; I call him a national treasure.

• Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.