“What a week!” Swamp Rabbit said. “On Sunday the Super Bowl. On Monday and Tuesday, the Iowa caususes and the State of the Union address. On Wednesday them Republican weasels acquit Trump. That’s four different reasons to get drunk.”

“Four excuses to catch up on my reading,” I said. “Those are nonsense events. A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing but the slow death of the republic.”

The rabbit was taken aback. “You should chill, Odd Man. Things ain’t that bad.”

Oh yes they are, I told him. In past years, I sent good writers to cover the Super Bowl — Faulkner, Chandler, Virginia Woolf. This year nobody wanted to go, they were all sick of the bombast and the bowing to the military and the bad music at the overproduced halftime shows.

Shakira and J-Lo had been booked to shake their assets at millions of flabby, beer-swilling bozos in living rooms all over the land. I predicted the media sages would call the show an “empowering” display of female and “Latinx” solidarity.

“What you got against women with good bodies shaking their assets?” Swamp Rabbit said.

“I’m all for it,” I replied. “Just don’t tell me it’s some kind of political statement. It’s just Jay-Z and the NFL using women to further enrich themselves.”

As it turned out, the Super Bowl was no more annoying than the bizarre display of presidential candidates cruising the caucuses for convention delegates in tiny Iowa. The primary ritual in Iowa seemed even dumber than usual this year thanks to a malfunctioning “caucus app” that indefinitely delayed the final vote tally.

Then came the presidential address to Congress, which was more about the ugly state of Donald Trump’s mind than about the state of the union. He rattled off a long series of lies and hit a new low by presenting the Medal of Freedom to the nation’s foremost woman hater and racist, Rush Limbaugh. Nancy Pelosi brought the obscene spectacle to a fitting end by shredding her copy of Trump’s foul speech.

The next day Senate Republicans, with the surprise exception of Mitt Romney, re-affirmed their fealty to the most corrupt president in U.S. history and shattered the myth that “checks and balances” built into the U.S. Constitution ensure our protection from would-be dictators. “Not guilty,” they said, one after the other.

I stopped by Swamp Rabbit’s shack after the impeachment trial verdict and found him passed out on the floor, surrounded by empty cans and bottles. “Who won the Super Bowl?” he asked when I woke him.

“Trump did, 52 to 48,” I told him. “The fix was in.”