Midlife Meditation

These guys... ...really miss this guy. After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.--Mr. Spock, "Amok Time," Star Trek, 1967. They've wanted this a very long time: single-party control of Washington, the chance to open the floodgates and release volumes of pent-up legislation that's been stymied by a stubbornly thoughtful, responsible President. For all that time, they've been able to deflect criticism of their utter ineffectiveness as lawmakers, with their Senate majority too small to overcome a veto. Give us a President we can work with, they've said, and watch how much we accomplish. And it came to pass that, through a Constitutional quirk that gives more a voice to rural states than urban states, the election did miraculously go the way in which the Republicans had hoped it would, and there was great rejoicing, for lo, there would be a new King in Washin...

Once and future Presidential candidate Rick Santorum doesn't like hearing about Christianity's dark side. He's not alone. Nine days ago, in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama committed blasphemy: he spoke about the atrocities committed by terrorists in the name of Islam--this wasn't the blasphemy--and then made note of Christianity's long history of waging campaigns of violence against unbelievers, persons of other faiths, and even against other Christians who differed from the majority in terms of skin color, language, or interpretation of the Gospel. The President was not slandering the faith. All the crimes against humanity he referred to--and he did it in as diplomatic a manner as it is possible to say such things, short of simply not saying them at all--are well-documented historical truths, some of them taking place within his own lifetime. Truthful and diplomatic though these remarks might be, simply saying them was enough t...

The worst part of it is that I still kind of like 24. The Fox action drama that spins out a very bad day in the life of counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer distinguished itself from the beginning with the extremes he would go to to extract information not just from obvious villains, but from well-meaning but misguided innocents. Shouting, threatening, torturing, even shooting one in the head to get his crony to talk--no action was too atrocious if it got Bauer the intel he needed to avert a far greater catastrophe. He was the ultimate pragmatist, doing whatever it took to defend his country, even as his friends, colleagues and superiors cried out in protest. He became a patriotic martyr whose actions, even though they had saved countless lives, rendered him an outcast, rejected by the country he loved. In the process, he endured torture, abuse, gunshots, even death (CLEAR!), not to mention the loss of every friend and family member he had. With its compressed storytelling, each...

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."--Mitch McConnell, October, 2010 If you've read my posts about teaching in the Reynolds School District, you've probably come across the term "high flyer." That's teacher talk for a student who is an exceptional child in ways that no parent wants his or child to be exceptional. The child may very well be bright, even gifted academically, and may not have any of the disabilities one normally associates with being on an Individualized Education Plan, but still is on the radar of every administrator and behavioral specialist of the school for one reason alone: he or she makes it hard for the rest of the class to learn. High flyers are obstructionists. They interrupt the teacher without being called on, talk with neighbors while the teacher is lecturing, distract everyone around them. When they do raise their hands, it is to ask to use the bathroom, g...