We get mail

Jon posts in comments:

"So, two tribes go to war to fight the cartoon versions of each other."

Wonderful, and very true. That is the problem with labeling others as "them", "they", or "it" - you are completely blind to the fact that "they" too are human beings... not people to be relegated to some "it" status... and as we've discussed as well as written all too often - PEOPLE ARE MORE ALIKE THAN THEY ARE DIFFERENT.

Grown-ups believing in boogiemen, foreign and domestic. Meanwhile, the well-dressed anarchist with the Rotary Club lapel pin picks your pocket while chiding you to work harder and ignore his failings. Fear is a primitive and useful instinct. Our methods of dealing with it--of absuing it politically and commercially--are just as primitive.

I really think one of the reasons many people are losing hope in the institutions they used to trust is that those institutions have spent so much time and effort portraying themselves to be capable and caring and yet the proof of those qualities is so obviously lacking. That proof is an insulting hailstorm of doublespeak.

This *is* the "future." We were supposed to get "better" at this stuff. What are all the credentials and diplomas and "experts" good for if we're just gonna stumble around like idiots? That's the internal dialogue, even if folks can't say it that clearly.