It seems we are more comfortable with regressing to school yard type polarization because it feeds the infant mind and emotions. I get that staying young is important but I believe striving to become a wise child is far superior to being an angry infant. The latter of course brings a false sense of expression of one’s “feelings”. The former is contemplative and objective and has the ability to act with compassion without compromising the principals that govern us.

To me, as experienced over decades, we now get barrages of lies; e.g., as if politics is built on them. Yet, it accustoms us to lie to our very selves. Our incivility is seen as some kind of tit-for-tat. And, rarely has any of us been refined to golden reason in the harsh fires you endured to receive the honor and awards of your advanced degree. That this is so of you is partly why I like reading your blogs. They cool my own passions, result of which might be imagined in an exchange where I would tell you “He called me an X, so I spit on him.”

Sadly, I have progressed but to silver-plated bronze reason, and with an Italianate fury to control. So, I say, still, of the persistent and nearly pathological liars in our leadership, I can condone a final service to us from out of their self-service: to leave and exile themselves out of the limelight. And, yet, if I will not engage them much in debate – they choose to hear me even less than I choose not to listen to them – then, if they won’t budge toward oblivion, I would just as soon to hound them down with the truth. If truth would set me free, lies meant to enslave me notwithstanding, maybe that they could not enslave me with their mendacity means they would shrivel in the presence of the truth. For, think, dear lady, how much sooner your own reason would have been so grandly refined in civilized discussions in truth.