The guard rails on a highway may restrict some folks from driving the way they want, but those rules mostly end up saving the lives of those other drivers who understand that living in a society means behaving in a commonly beneficial way.
The element which is conveniently missing from today's Republican Party is the human one. People's hopes and realities become numbers and words, devoid of personality and easy to erase.
My experience tells me that any time you hear people laughing on a sitcom, it's the writers who happen to be closest to the microphones - not the audience.
A product is usually created to improve people's lives; otherwise, why buy it? I'm no genius, but I am an American, and gosh-darnit, I consume, so I know what I'm talking about.
We fight wars from progressively great heights and distances, the blessings of technology steadily removing the personal human element from what was historically an extremely personal experience.
Social media has created a legion of social delinquents, billions of people speaking not their minds but their spleens, venting everything from the gum-cracking snark befitting a hair-twisting mallrat to the froth-flecked rage of a bell tower marksman.
From the moment America went full-on industrial, it seems like it's been a steady path towards people never having to be physically present in order to satisfy their needs.
The spectacle of insensitivity that is the gun lobby and its outspoken, out-of-their-mind apparatchiks, is the apotheosis of what the Republican Party has allowed itself to become.
The irony is that the people we tend to vote for actually look down on voters and voting. That's just idiotic, right? That's like a snake eating its own tail! A wolf in a trap gnawing off its own head to escape!
No matter what your political persuasion, you can find a guide that makes it quick, easy and painless to exercise your right to vote. Wanna know what a certain proposition put forth by a cadre of undisclosed billionaires which cuts funding for public education, arts and infrastructure means? Use the voting guide!
I know it's sappy, but I bet there's a market for civility and niceness out there that, while probably not as titillating as a junkyard scrap between shirtless adversaries, it'd sure be healthier.
Fantasy-based ideologies invariably have neat happy endings where all the bad people and all the bad behavior goes away when the volume is turned up and enough force is applied.