Wow

     Sat down at the keyboard and...I don't have much to say.  Time goes on and some verities endure.  As a society, we learn little and learn it slowly.

     The derp rolls on.  "Point shooting" keeps showing up as some wonderful new idea, instead of a discredited notion two or three generations old.  Yeah, look, okay -- if you're fighting at grappling distance, at knife-fight distance, you're liable to be wielding a firearm in a way not too different to a knife or a fist (and with all the risk that entails); but you have that firearm and it has sights so that fights can be waged at a much greater distance whenever possible.  Run away!  --And get enough distance use your sights if you have to engage.

     U. S. politics is, has been and will continue to be a sideshow crossed with a soap opera.  It's nothing new -- Jefferson and Hamilton started spatting as Cabinet members during George Washington's first term as President.  Come to think of it, each man, one time or another, expressed concern that the other would be the end of this country, and subsequent politicians and their followers have kept up the chorus.  Oh, do be concerned; do support causes, parties and politicians you think will be best, and do keep watch on and protest those that worry you.  But don't fall for the apocalyptic rhetoric; the closest this country has come to that end was the Late Civil Unpleasantness Between The States, and look at how it lined up: the breakaway States promptly formed their own federal government and the wider socioeconomic issues map without much effort into a conflict between Jeffersonian South and Hamiltonian North.  There's a necessary tension in our system of government.  It's not broken, that's how it works.

     The media is in the business of selling your attention and will do nearly anything to get it.  Cross this with politics and you get a Mencken quote:
      "Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."
     Understand this, and don't let yourself be herded.