Howdy,OneArt. I'd say that the "treadmill" I refer is evidence of the confinement Hoagland is writing about; what's for certain is that at this moment, the experience recollected in the poem, he wants out of the life he no longer has empathy for. I don't think the poem is political in the way some have suggested, although it starts that way. Rather, the first stanza is set up as a situation that will be contrasted against the narrator's increasing unease, and with the final stanza, he alone in the room with a television blaring with the sound off, we find him relating not to the righteousness of the cause, but only to the gathered anger and rage itself. All these angry faces seemed ready to burst out of their confines, spill over, render their former social relationships meaningless. What appeals to me is not the sense this makes as an argument rather than the sense it gives of the sensation of being closed in and set upon, and the increasing level of the instinct of fight-or-flight.