You Must be this Funny....

One of the things I've noticed and noted (repeatedly in this space, among other places) in the almost nineteen years of Return to the Land of the Round Door Knobs (Part One) is how oh-so-seriously we take our politics. Well, the eleven or so percent of us who vote, I mean. The rest of the trolls and the gnomes who call in to the local Crank Yanker talk radio station, usually a  five hundred watt AM daytimer, or add 'yo' or 'ditto' to other folks' postings on news websites, either aren't registered or can't figure out how to blacken the circle, pull the lever or mark their marks on Election Day.

The coarsening of the civil discourse in this country has accelerated (in my opinion) in recent years and if you don't think so too, well, you're a candy-A$$e----- HALT! Sorry, I stepped onto the ignorance escalator and pushed the ludicrous speed button as maybe we all have once too often lately. These days we have folks bandying about "liberal" and "conservative" as if they were two of the seven words you can't say on radio and television. I'd like to think "ethnic cleansing" and "thermonuclear mutual destruction" might round out that list but neither the words nor the acts they describe seem to incite or upset very many people. 

And just when I fear we'll all die off angry and alone, someone signals that there's no reason to take politics any more seriously than anything else in life since we never get out of here alive. My thoughts and sympathy go to a family whom I've never met, the Snyders, in a place I've never been, Utah, on the passing of Robert, a husband, a father and a brother. 

Robert was a man with a keen sense of self-deprecation and wry humor as I think you'll agree when you reach the end of his obit. The closing line made me smile and the more I thought about it, the bigger my grin became. I hope it does the same thing for you and that we can start to take and make the first step to crawl back from the ledge of shrill and righteous indignation that sometimes makes us behave as something less than the crown of creation we have always been.
-bill kenny