Here's hoping ...

I hope you have lots of these today!

Feel free to tell me about them if you want. I promise lawyer-client confidentiality.

The problem

It bothers me that this even needs to be said, but every day brings more tragedies like that in Virginia. Until we learn to glorify peaceful solutions, instead of cheering loudly when someone in a movie beats up the person perceived as the bad guy, the world will never change. 

Hatred, the Buddha told us, is never ended by hatred but by love. Jesus said similar things, like turning the other cheek. 

No one listens.

(Background music: Theme from Jaws)

Life lessons

I have decided that I may do better to look at the political process in this country as a source of many lessons that I need to learn.

For example, Donal Trump has already taught me the value of keeping my mouth shut about things concerning which I know little but still have an opinion.

Yes, I am retired and so you may wonder that I need a vacation. But Damien is still working, after his fashion, and we are taking a few days away to visit friends in the country.

Sound familiar?

Political Discourse Today

What we are

As we move further along in the presidential nomination process, I ponder what it means that as a people, we -- or at least a significant and vocal number of us -- seem to love being entertained by bullies who shout insults, tell blatant lies and so on. We seem to have mistaken the faux reality of (un)reality television for the real thing, to have succumbed to the temptation to think the political process is a matter of voting someone off the island for no reason other than the joy of forming alliances with people we don't trust. 

The most disturbing news story I saw this morning about last night's mis-named debate was that it broke ratings records.

Because that is what matters. We have arrived at the status of the Roman empire -- bread and circuses. Worse, all we are getting is the circus.

Is it time to re-think this?

Amusing as this assertion is, things are not as simple as that makes it sound. The TSA has in fact found people carrying weapons and explosives. Whether they intended them for terrorist acts is a matter for discussion. They catch a number of other criminals, such as people carrying illegal drugs.

It is true, however, that after the Department of Homeland Security spent over nine hundred million dollars between 2007 and 2013 on the TSA program, the GAO released a study indicating that there was no evidence that the program had had any impact whatsoever on uncovering or detaining terrorists.

This, however, leads to an interesting problem of interpretation. You know the joke about the guy who went outside and screamed every morning to scare away tigers? His neighbor, irritated by the noise, pointed out that there were no tigers in the area. The man smiled and said, "It's working very well, isn't it?"

So there are those who will say the TSA scares terrorists away, and the proof is that we don't find terrorists boarding airplanes.

This leaves unresolved questions about whether TSA procedures are a form of low-level terrorism on their own.

Old friends

For International Friendship Day, I thought I would share this Simon and Garfunkel memory from the days when I could never imagine being seventy, which is now not all that far away.

Old friends, old friends sat on their park bench like bookends.
A newspaper blowin' through the grass
Falls on the round toes of the high shoes of the old friends.
Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun.
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settles like dust on the shoulders of the old friends.
Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy.
Old friends, memory brushes the same years, silently sharing the same fears...

Old friends ...

Paul Simon

1968