Two Feet In | Writing and the Institution

The year of the drought --  When the lawns died,  When the frogs didn't show, When the fires did come -- I walked along the drying stream,  Seeing the mud turn to clay. I walked through the fields, Seeing the dirt crack. Then the grass dried up and The dirt opened from cracks to crevices, Breaches in the ground  Where I fit my fingers. I thought of the frogs, the crawfish, Wondered how they would survive. Weeks turned to months with no rain. The creeks withered. Turtles disappeared, Dark ponds became dark holes. Cormorants looked in vain for fish  Where no fish were.  The crackling grass caught fire and News crews rushed, too late, only To find the volunteer fire department Had arrived and watered the brush Enough. Decimation. One in ten trees died that year. All were hit, but the pines stressed early. Their stress invited the beetles, The beetles consumed mercilessly. I lost two 60-foot pines that year, Paid teams of Hi...

First, the breakdown of Gohmert's means of questioning: 1. Ask a question 2. Let the respondent give a partial response 3. Interrupt before the respondent completes a coherent answer, attempting to engage in civil discourse 4. Change the topic slightly, disparage the speaker's position through the straw man fallacy 5. Attempt a facade of legitimacy by brief back-tracking such as "I'm not judging ..." then proceeds to judge 6. Assume only he has the right to make universal definitions about issues that have been argued about for millenia, using some sophomoric authority which is not his, having never actually studied the issue in depth or through any academic institution 7. Repeatedly interrupt the respondent so that any inconsistencies in his own questioning are not easily exposed for the few minutes he has at the mike. 8. Take the whole episode back to his constituency, reframing the argument in terms of good vs evil, light vs dark, anti-Americ...