I could never be a happy idiot, to borrow a phrase from a Jackson Browne lyric.  It does not take genius to see the abject sorrow all around.  Much is just bad luck.  Parents usually do the best they can raising their kids.  Often though they make crucial mistakes and the child matures to a dysfunctional adult.  Odds are the parents just replicated the pattern of their own upbringing, or the lack of upbringing.  Sometimes the cause of tragedy takes a more obvious form.  You were distracted, neglected to check the blind spot in the lane to your left, and…… then you wake up in the hospital.  Disaster arrives, to your physical and financial well-being.  With good luck, and enough time, you will recover.

It is the suffering caused by deliberate, pre-meditated choice that disposes me to have a basic pessimism about our prospects as a species.  The phrase “family of man” is a useful metaphor.  Often the meaning seems empty, a bad joke, belied by too many facts.

This story in yesterday’s New York Times sent a chill into my soul.  I’ve not been able to shake the memory of seeing this on the front page.  It’s not the unfortunate kid who runs the streets, and dies too young, a consequence of the violence that attends the illegal drug trade that depresses me.  That I can understand.  It is the darkness in high places, the ravening exploitation of fellow humans by those in high places that keeps me up at night.  Those stories make me shudder.  I know these stories are nothing new.  But that awareness really does not help.

So, if you have the fortitude for a brief walk along the dark underbelly of this Land of Hopes and Dreams, here is the Times article.  Washington Redskins Cheerleaders Describe Topless Photo Shoot and Uneasy Night Out.

The question silently waiting answer in the room is: So, what is to be done?  I do not know.  The instinctive, visceral response that rises to consciousness is simple: Run! The best that any of us can do, if we can is to remove ourselves from the trajectory of evil.  That is a big “if” I know.

I leave you with a few lyric lines from the anthem by Bruce Springsteen, Born To Run.

Oh, Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young….

Together we could break this trap
We’ll run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back
Oh, Will you walk with me out on the wire
`Cause baby I’m just a scared and lonely rider….

Everybody’s out on the run tonight
But there’s no place left to hide
Together Wendy we can live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul…..

If you feel a need to reset your psyche after reading the sorted story of exploitation, I can do no better than suggest listening to Springsteen’s Born to Run.  CLICK HERE.