Police Endangering Police
by Rick Boettger
The recent assassination of two innocent New York cops by a crazy man who wanted revenge for the killing of Eric Garner by other New York officers has appropriately outraged the nation. No one defends the revenge killing. I hope and pray nothing like it happens again.
But we as a nation must learn from not only the sins of others, but of our own. Our not-crazy enemies in ISIL waterboard orange-clad Americans in revenge for our having done the same to their people. Our terroristic drone attacks on civilians, even American teen-agers, is bound to redound back on us, planting the seeds of hate for another 9/11 style attack.
And on the streets of America with at least 7 times as many civilian deaths from police violence as there are police deaths from civilian violence, with rare sanction for deaths caused by the police, there are going to be consequences. Police are accepted, even respected for going after a cop-killer with no intention of taking him alive. But both the police and the citizenry seem to think it an unspeakable atrocity if the roles are reversed.
The 95% of good cops would never maintain a choke hold on someone pleading “I can’t breathe!” or brag “I dropped like a f***king bomb on his head!” after killing a man lying docilely in the sand. At some point they have to stop enabling this tiny minority that are not only breaking the law, bringing disrepute on their service, and, worst of all, actually endangering their own lives.
The two innocent police who died were, to be clear, killed by a crazed homicidal maniac. But the reason he put those two men in his sights was due to the sins of their bad brothers in blue. Currently, the police themselves go after cop-killers with ruthless vengeance. They try not to keep track of their own 1000-plus killings, while reverentially chronicling the 119 killed police officers. They, abetted, as I have written at length, by their police-loving citizenry and courts, make a mockery of our justice system by shamelessly lying on witness stands to protect each other.
Our police need to police themselves. We can’t do it for them. They should sanction their brothers when they are wrong because it is just, it is compassion for the citizens they are sworn to protect, and because it will keep their own lives safer. I’d like to see a sort of spiritual revival, and, from the ones I know, I believe they have it in them.
~~~~~~~~
See also Walt Street Journal report: http://www.wsj.com/articles/hundreds-of-police-killings-are-uncounted-in-federal-statistics-1417577504
It is a given that in our system of laws we need law enforcement. It is also a given that the vast majority of law enforcement personnel are good and decent people, but to disregard the clear fact there are some rotten apples in the barrel, as evidenced by facts and figures, is naive. To continue to protect the “bad cops” is not the solution. Weeding out these individuals is the only way to bring back trust in our police. Quiet acceptance of deaths at the hands of law enforcement is a form of consent. This isn’t a simple matter of “You’re either for us or against us”, but a more real-life complex problem that needs equally thoughtful solutions. Accountability and police support are not mutually exclusive. We can do both at the same time. We have brains, let’s use them. Join us for the march for accountability this Sunday at 4:00 starting at Truman Waterfront.
as usual Shaquille Boettger refuses to countenance the world as it is, and instead approaches his institutionalized visage through a pseudo-liberal dogmatic matrix of unrealized and ill-informed data internalized by the societal norm of socialization.
bust out of it man! open your eyes! dare to think outside of the box!
you can do it!
Well, Keys Bum, Rick Boettger at least puts his real name on his written words, as does Alex Symington, which can’t be said of you and the person(s) using Facebook to sponsor the protest march Sunday afternoon. I like Rick’s challenge/invitation to KWPD, and I like the protest march sponsor(s)’ challenge/invitation to KWPD, but I am not holding my breath anything will come from it, other than more of the same. So I suppose I agree with you, because I am a realist, or at least I try to be one, and, in any event, I get plenty of angel help in that direction, because living in dream land, la la land, make believe land, don’t appeal to me, nor to the angels.
Rick, Alex, many people in Key West upset with KWPD over the Eimers case, had a perfect chance to express and rally support for their sentiments in the August mayor primary. After I saw the vote count, I knew how upset 98 percent of the voters were about the Eimers case. They weren’t upset, because they voted for either Mayor Craig Cates, or challenger Margaret Romero, both of whom I had called out publicly and repeatedly in that race to show public remorse for what KWPD did to Charles Eimers, and to publicly apologize to the Eimers family, and they publicly declined.
What that election told me is, the problem is much bigger than KWPD, and much bigger than who is mayor or a city commissioner. The problem is the general populace. That’s where the revolution needs to start, in my skeptical opinion. 100 people showed up for the Thanksgiving Day night candlelight memorial for Charles Eimers. 100 people. Were you there Keys Bum? Rick and Alex were there. I was there. Do you think 100 people was enough bodies to make a statement? Facetious question. 1,000 bodies would not be enough. 10,000 bodies at Sunday’s protest march, now that would be a revolution in spirit. Not holding my breath.
Ok Sloan…here we go again…
I recall asking you specific questions back before the election on what you would do about the police brutality in KW if you were elected Mayor. I cannot recall one specific answer as to what your plan of action would be to hold the murderers and cover-up artists accountable for their actions perpetrated against Charles Eimers. If I am wrong with this assessment, please correct me.
All I remember you stating over and over again is that if you were elected Mayor, the first thing that you would do would be to apologize to Charles Eimers’ family. An apology would mean nothing if the perpetrators of the crime are still allowed to roam your streets with assumed authority and a loaded gun.
Just maybe, the majority of voters did not vote for you because you did not show them the confidence and step-by-step planning it would take to right the wrongs done by the KWPD et al.
If you were a thinking man, you would have gathered up many of your friends to go with you to that Commission meeting in which you spoke recently. I doubt that if there were 50+ people there to back you up in what you were saying to the Commission about the murder of Charles, that big buffoon would have had the sack to defend the KWPD as he did. But no. It had to be all about the Sloan, again.
You need to quit harassing people with the “who did you vote for?” bs. You obviously are not the man for the job.
If you’re going to the march, I sure hope you are going to bring large photos of both Mr. Eimers and Mr. Murphy. Without putting a face to the unaccountability, the march will be pointless.
Sister, I flat didn’t want the mayor job, and said so many times during that campaign, and that the reason U was in the race was because angels told me to enter the race, if I knew what was good for me.
In fact, I went to city commission meetings during the race, and I went after the mayor and commissioners for not getting on top of the Eiemrs case and doing something, instead of doing nothing; I told them they all should resign, because they had demonstrated no remorse for what their police did to Charles Eimers, and because they had not apologized to the Eimers family. The Citizen didn’t report that until much later. The blue paper never reported it, to my knowledge.
I tried to get other people to go to city commission meetings and do what I did, and there were no takers. I also told you, and others, many times, there is nothing a mayor can do, nor a city commissioner, on his/her own, but say what he/she thinks; and to make changes, a mayor, or city commissioner, needs a majority of the votes on the dais; otherwise, nothing changes. I also told you, and many others, I would try to get the Feds involved, if I were elected mayor, for I knew the State Attorney, the KWPD, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were bogus in such a case. For a fact, I was the only candidate for office, who actually tried to bring off a change, knowing it was a fools errand, because nobody wanted to rock the boat.
Did you notice that, despite my calling out blue paper readers, and Naja and Arnaud, to disclose if they voted for Cates or Romero, none of them came forward?
Do you have any clue, no, obviously, what kind of metaphysical reverse undercurrent being upset about Eimers case, yet voting for Cates or Romero, put into the spirit? Do you have any idea, no obviously, what kind of additional reverse metaphysical undercurrent was put into the spirit, when those people were called out, and they still did not come forward and disclose they voted for Cates or Romero?
Do you have any idea, no obviously, of the reverse metaphysical undercurrent hiding behind a pen name like you do, like other blue paper readers do, puts into the spirit? Double that reverse metaphysical undercurrent, after called you and the other weenies out about hiding behind pen names, and you did not start using your real names.
For a fact, Sister, I was the only person in Key West, who actually called the city out, face to face, in their own house, at city commission meetings. At at candidate forums. And in reported Citizen articles. I don’t recall the blue paper quoted me once, during the campaign, but perhaps that old age forgetfulness.
And you blame me for not doing enough? That’s hilarious.
Especially, after thanking me in a reader comment under a blue paper article, for telling the city commission how Charles Eimers came to Key West to do God’s work, and how their police murdered him, because they thought he was homeless. That video, the blue paper did publish, after the Citizen covered some of what I had said, leaving out some of it, after which city commissioner Mark Rossi went rabid psychotic, then city commissioner Tony Yaniz joined him, and I still did not shut up until Mayor Cates told Police Chief Donie Lee sitting in the back of the meeting hall to have his police officer get me to shut up. That part was not in the commission meeting video, as by then I was off the microphone, standing in the middle aisle, while the camera was on the dais.
But I’m glad you wrote what you did, Sister, because you actually represent what’s wrong in Key West, and in America,.The people want the kind of government they have, evidenced by who they vote for. The buck stops with the people, Sister. The buck stops with each person,
Key West people who voted for Cates or Romero approved how they dealt with their police killing Charles Eimers. You can not save them from that. Nobody can save them from it. But they could mitigate it, by admitting they messed up,.,
Do you have any idea, no obviously, of the reverse metaphysical undercurrent of campaigning for the mayoral position of a city government while at the same time stating that you in fact do not want the job? Do you have any idea, no OBVIOUSLY, of the reverse metaphysical undercurrent of your suggesting that you care about what happened to Charles Eimers all the while only using his demise to bring attention to yourself?
Your ego negates all the positive your spirit tries to accomplish. Quit it already.
I told the angels three months ago that I wanted to be relieved of duty in the Eimers case. That night, my father came to me in a dream and said I needed to be involved in the case through December. So, for reasons that would take too long to tell and explain, I took that as marching orders from the angels to stay in the case through December, hoping that meant I would be relieved of duty after the first of the year, but not holding my breath about that, as I never yet saw the angels relieve me of duty in anything they had me engage while it was sill active.
I am, and always have been, fully aware and uncomfortable with using the mayor’s race as a barometer of how Key West and its people felt about what KWPD did to Charles Eimers. My discomfort was directly tied to being a mayoral candidate, or having been one, after the election was over and I continued to be involved in the Eimers case.
Weird, nobody accused me of grandstanding when, during the mayor’s race, I told the Mayor and City Commissioners they all should resign, because they had shown no public remorse for what their police did to Charles Eimers, and because they had not publicly apologized to his family. Nor was I accused of grandstanding because I repeatedly, at candidate forums, and in my posts at goodmorningkeywest.com, called Mayor Cates and Margaret Romero out, for not apologizing to the Eimers family. Nor was I accused of grandstanding for repeatedly saying, if elected, my first official act, after being sworn in: as Mayor, I would apologize to the Eimers family for what KWPD did to their father.
I was told by several people, if I did that, it would put the City at risk in any lawsuit filed by the Eimers family, and I said, so what?, the apology is the right thing to do.
Not voting for Cates or Romero also was the righ thing to do, for Key West people who were upset about the Eimers case and how the Mayor and City Commissioners and Police Chief and his troops were handling it.
You have a personal beef with me, Sister.
The real kicker, though, as I wrote in my reply to your first attack, is, you thanked me for being so selfish at that City Commission meeting, where I called them all out, and City Commissioners Mark Rossi and Tony Yaniz went rabid psychotic. You thanked me. Then yesterday you say it was all about me.
I didn’t even want to be at that City Commission meeting. As that day passed, I wanted even more not to be there, because I was sensing what was going to drop on them during closing citizen comments, when citizens can talk to the Mayor and Commissioners about anything. They had no idea what was coming. I had no idea what a commotion it would cause, which would have been swept quietly under the rug, even by the Blue Paper, if Rossi and Yaniz had not melted down on the city’s public TV channel.
But you are right. It really pisses me off to know people down here are raising hell about what KWPD did to Charles Eimers, and then covered it up, and how the Mayor and City Commissioners backed KWPD all the way, when those same people, with their eyes wide open, voted for for either Cates or Romero. And now they are complaining?
Now they are outraged? Sorry, Sister, that will never fly with me.
And it shouldn’t fly with you. If they didn’t want to vote for me, they could have written none of the above on the Mayor part of their ballot, or they could have left the Mayor part of their ballot unmarked. They knew that. They knew what they were doing, and they did it. They played it both ways. They were house divided, which cannot stand but must fall, to quote the Palestinian Jew in the New Testament.
Nothing would please me more than to see Key West and city hall and KWPD leveled by the Eimers case. Leveled.
I do not worry about Charles Eimers. He did what he came to do, he is a hero in my eyes, even though he did not see it that way when he was being martyred. He fulfilled his sacred mission to do God’s work in Key West, which I seem to be the only person involved in the case to recognize and understand.
That’s the part of what I told the Mayor and City Commissioners, which led to Rossi and Yaniz melting down, and it ended up on the front page of the Citizen, sans the part that melted them down – the God part. I made it between the Mayor and City Commissioners and KWPD, and God. That’s also what I did at the earlier candlelight memorial.
The ensuing blue paper article video, comparing KW to other cities with police problems, used part of what I told the Mayor and Commissioners that fateful night, but the Blue Paper did not use in its article and video what I told the Mayor and Commissioners about God. God has no place in the Eimers case, unless I bring God into the case.
The Eimers children certainly are devastated; there would be something terribly wrong if they were not devastated. Unfortunately, Key West, city hall, and KWPD being leveled by the Eimers case will not cure their devastation, as they will learn, if that is what happens. People like you, Sister, will revel in the city being devastated. You will be doing high-fives, when what should be happening is a city-wide funeral and mourning for a city that lost it soul.
Meanwhile, something really ironic happened yesterday after when I came out of watching “The Interview”, which I reviewed in today’s post at http://www.goodmorningkeyewst.com. What happened, which was ironic, is a Tropic volunteer I did not know, a woman, clasped my wrist with her hand and thanked me for all I am doing for Key West, she hoped I get the award. I asked, what award? She said, oh, maybe I didn’t know about it. No, but what award?, I asked. She said, the Pulitzer. I said, oh, its Naja and Arnaud Girard and the Blue Paper who are being promoted for the Putlizer, and I think it was me who started promoting them for it, and I kept promoting them for it, and other people then joined in. She said, well, thanks anyway for all I am doing, she really likes my comments to Blue Paper articles.
I left the Tropic, pedaled my bicycle home, wondering how a Blue Paper reader got mixed up so that I was being promoted for the Pulitzer, not yet knowing you were headed my way, again. The angels’ sense of humor is hilarious :-).
The abuse New York’s Mayor DiBlasio is taking from the POLICE and many segments of the public for the actions of a lunatic is another sign of how little people understand how a democracy works. It might be a shock for many people to find out that the police, in a democracy, have to answer to civilian authorities, just as the military has to. All these policemen that are disrespecting their Mayor are also disrespecting their country and its form of government. If the civilian authority had no power over how the police operate, we are living in a police state. If you don’t like the policies of the civilian authority, then vote them out. But the police, in a democracy, must obey this authority whether they like it or not. Their job is to carry out civilian policy, not to question it. Rick, I appreciate your courage.
that presupposes we live in a democracy, which we obviously do not. Shaquille Boettgers handicap (and perhaps yours as well), is that he cannot fathom that the societal structure around him does not in any way comport to the fairytale paradigm presented to him, and internalized by him, by his high school civics book. your elected leaders do not give orders, they take them. you think Obama or Bush, or any of them are the architects of war? fiscal policy? the social agenda? do you think your vote counts, for ANYTHING? do you honestly think that any national leader in this nation gives one iota of thought to what you want? what’s best for you? what’s best for the nation as a whole? do you really think that the political far right/ far left lunatics howling at the moon with their ever more outrageous statements are anything but political theater?
please tell me you are not that naive.
someone once wrote:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
——-
In the end, we all are worm food, if we are not cremated, if we ass-u-me there is no after life 🙂
Hail DiBlasio!…or whatever his name is this week.
I heard thru the aboveground underground that the nyc mayor bill diblasio was a communist-Marxist demopublicrap! however his birth name was actually warren Wilhelm jr till he changed it to bill diblasio to garner the democrap vote! oh say it isn’t so! 😉 [sarc]
A retired NY City vice-cop told me the same thing on Higgs Beach last night.
OK, how about this: I should have said in “an alledged democracy”. Now go drink some decaff and calm down.
geez jerry, what’s with you Blue Paper contributors? you are all so hostile to your readers. why do you resort to insults as a first response? are you and Shaquille Boettger so thin skinned and self-doubting in your literary skills and cognizant abilities that you cannot respond sans pejoratives?
why don’t you defend your position; you’re an author for god’s sake, a professional writer. show me, and the other readers, through your literary genius, sardonic wit, ethereal prose, or big block crayon letters, where I am in error. show me the fallacy of my thinking. please, fill the board with your intelligence!
or put your tail between your legs, put away your pen, stick your clown nose back on, and go back to taxi driving.
Rick Boettger told me yesterday, before the Justice KeyWest march began, that I am dead on calling out people who are upset about the Charles Eimers case, but voted for Mayor Cates or Margaret Romero last August. I report the march in today’s “Very definitely not politically correct or nice – hallelujah! – yesterday’s Justice KeyWest protest march against Key West police killing Charles Eimers and then covering it up, among other the year of the goat kick-off festivals” post at http://www.goodmorningkeywest.com. Naja and Arnaud were at the march, took lots of video footage, interviewed a few hecklers, and I imagine will have something on that to show their readers pretty soon.
Did he tell you that your reporting on how Jesus was molested by his mother is dead on too?
I don’t recall Rick Boettger and I ever talked about the Mary-Jesus incest. It was Jesus, his mother and Archangel Michael who told the lady I then was with and me about it, as you well know, Sister, from reading my reports about it at goodmorningkeywest.com, where I published that unfortunate event a number of times.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? (Hamlet, V.i)
Jeez Keysbum, I was kind of agreeing with you, but I suppose you are so into making people mad at you that you couldn’t figure it out. ciao, PCM
Ok, please tell me what PCM means.
Also, I would like to discuss this democracy thing a bit more…are you saying that in a democracy the police are forbidden to abide by their individual conscience? How in the world could they possibly be advocates for peaceful relations without invoking their conscience? Do police make a vow to forgo invoking their conscience? If so, then each and every one of them has made a vow to not be a human being…and therein lies the problem…we are being ruled over by a lower lifeform.
ya know what jerry, if I make you and the others mad because I offer up a challenge you can’t meet, so be it. I have proffered offer after offer to all the pundits here at the Blue Paper to rebut me and carry on an intelligent, civil discourse. so far I have been met with mostly silence or prose unworthy of a 5 year old child. John Donnelly is the only one with sufficient character and integrity to defend and promote his point of view. the rest of you cower behind insults, braggadocio, and a misplaced sense of piety.
you put forth a point of view, so defend it. I’m sorry if I make you uncomfortable and perhaps scared of having your ignorance and naiveté exposed, but so what? that’s how to learn, grow and develop.
PCM= pseudo Christian moron??
Pure Cow Manure?
very good Sister! I bow to your obvious acerbic wit.
So, I took the time to look up PCM on Urban Dictionary and Pseudo Christian Moron seems to be in the #1 position of possibilities. I seriously hope he’s not referring to #3 but in all liklihood he probably means #6.
Jeez, Keysbum, sorry, but you don’t make me uncomfortable at all. The only emotion I feel for you is compassion. I feel sad you can’t find a more constructive way to use your formidable intelligence. I’m not being sarcastic when I say I hope you feel better some day. As for my point of view, if you could ever explain what it is you are criticizing me for, you can be sure I’ll respond respectfully. And by the way, thanks for calling me a writer with all the rest of the stuff you wrote, even if you are making fun of me. At least my attempts at such are obvious enough to be recognized. Maybe I’m getting somewhere. Thanks for the erncouragement.
when the day arrives Jerome that people such as yourself shed their cognitive dissonance, and open their minds to the possibility that there is indeed a realty heretofore unknown to them, I will feel better. because the fact is my friend, i do make you feel uncomfortable. people such as myself, and Sister, disrupt the normalcy of your thought pattern. we interrupt the comfort of the state promulgated socialization you internalized. your reaction of prosecuting pejoratives at the mere suggestion that democracy in America was a fallacy is demonstration of that. Shaquille Boettger cannot tolerate for a nanosecond the postulate that voting is inconsequential, and instantly labels me an ‘internet troll.” John Donnelly cannot view his participation in the imperial armed forces of america as anything but noble and just, and any destruction or murder of “non-americans” or their countries as morally correct because they were following the orders of their CIC. it is understandable to be reluctant to divorce oneself from whatever orthodoxy you were brought up with. but it is also pathological to deny a truth when it is presented to you. what if i told you WW11 was fought for the same reason we just obliterated Libya? what if i told you Prohibition had nothing to do with temperance? what if i told you that one family basically owns and controls the world? your natural response now, is to call me a conspiracy theorist; why not instead investigate these things for yourself. liberate your mind, you might be surprised at what you find out, if you open yoursrelf up to it. and that it would seem, is a big IF.
anyway, i hope you and yours, and the entire Blue Paper community have a great and safe new year!
Cower? Keysbum, you’re the braveheart who uses a pen name, after I challenged you several times to quit hiding behind it :-). Usually I agree with what you post to blue paper articles; but unlike you, from what I have seen you post here, I engage situations where live ammo is used, some of it potentially fatal, physically. And yes, I view it all as a fool’s errand, because I am just as skeptical (understatement) as you, that it makes one iota if difference in the countless little political schemes, which have visions, er,delusions of grandeur, what I, you, or anyone does; however, how people engage, or don’t engage, the grist and grime this world serves up might have some bearing on their souls’ transit, bearing and destination.
Here Sloan, a giant list of authors that use pen names that you can harass…knock yourself out…please.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pen_names
so lets say I bow to your wishes and reveal my full name to you. what good does that do?? how would you know it’s my real name? you do not know me, probably never will. we have most likely even passed one another in Key West at some point (Duval, the Tropic, wherever), but so what? providing my identity does nothing for you. the Blue Paper knows it, Shaquille Boettger knows it, and if your angels are real, they know it.
ask them.
You know very well, Keysbum, why I got on you this latest time about hiding behind a pen name: you had just accused the other people who comment to blue paper articles, except John Donnelly, of cowering. It would be up to you to be honorable and use your legal name – if you are honorable,.
As for braveheart Sister, you also know very well why I called Keysbum out, this time. I myself used a pen name for my first 3 novels, and a number of things I published during that era (before I was using the Internet), did not have anything on them to identify me. So I know that terrain very well. However, none of those writings put me in the crosshairs of the police or a city, state, or national government.
Some things I wrote back then did that very thing: letters to the editor in the Boulder, Colorado daily newspaper, had my name and snail mail address on them.
A front page article in that newspaper, with my photo in a community meeting, quoting comments I and other citizens, including an ACLU representative, made, about particular cop who hated homeless people and was ever on the verge of going off his rocker and doing something horrible, and homeless people having rights, and private citizens having rights to speak out about that cop and the city police department, led to that cop threatening me the next time he saw me on Pearl Street Mall, which was his beat, which led to my having interesting dealings, by letter, with the police chief, which led to the police chief seeing a divine intervention I had told him was about to happen in another high profile matter in Boulder, which led to that troubled cop being reassigned to another part of the city, where he would not have to deal with homeless people and probably would be a pretty good cop, which was all I was trying to get the police chief to do, but he was stonewalling me, until the divine intervention I had told him was coming, happened.
Back then, Boulder was a progressive city with a one human family’-like reputation, although I never heard that slogan used there. Boulder was far more tolerant than Key West, I later would learn.
Happy New Year Everyone!
No Keysbum, I’m sorry, but you do not make me uncomfortable. and that is a fact. I, like you, have wandered endlessly looking for the “truth”, and what I put forth in my essays is my version of what that search has revealed. That’s right, no different from what you have done with your life. I try to expose that “truth” to others, just as you do. If you could ever convince me of your “truth” I’d be the first to admit it, but so far you have given me nothing to hold onto. If my efforts leave you equally cold, all I can do is keep trying. something I will do in good faith. Best wishes, PCM