Last one out, please shut off the lights ...

There's a reason, I'm beginning to see, that I have somehow found myself residing in a treehouse of sorts in Mandeville, Louisiana. It's apparent that divine intervention led me to a place which -- although creating the inherent need for me to commute quite a bit -- offers me solace during stressful times.

It's not just the stress that is concomitant with continuing to assemble a new life after Katrina.

And, it's not just the stress that accompanies the enormous medical and financial challenges I've dealt with since May 2008, arising from the actions of an unscrupulous dentist.

There's something else going on. Something much bigger. It's the animosity that people display these days. Ted Kennedy dies and the Times Picayune's comment section below the story is bursting with largely vitriolic barbs, seemingly written with great pleasure. Not only do the posters jab at the deceased, but at each other, with a "can you top this" relish.

Just when I wonder if perhaps this is something attributable to demographics, I read, several days later, in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (the newspaper of my hometown where I maintain a very modest lake retreat), that the Wauwatosa (suburb) school superintendent now regrets his decision regarding our president's recent address to school children. Seems that Mr. Ertl actually "banned" the address from being heard. And now -- perhaps due to not gaining as much support for his decision as he'd anticipated -- he waffles after the fact.

You know, I remember these comic books we received in grade school in the early 1960s, during the Cold War. They actually more resembled the type of graphic/comic works that have become quite the trend as of late. The ones I recall reading as a 10-year-old portrayed Russians as being sinister creatures lurking everywhere, under my bed, just outside my door, in the closet ... just waiting to pounce upon me and turn me into a Communist.

Well, I have news. The bogeyman is alive and well. And he's right here, even in my bucolic semi-rural setting. He lives in you and he lives in me, every time we pre-judge and condemn, every time we practice intolerance, every time we react with knee jerks and fear and ignorance, instead of with compassion, independent judgment, critical thinking, and the willingness to lend consideration to the beliefs and ideas of others.

We don't need anyone else's help to diminish our country and the principles upon which it was founded. We are doing just fine on our own.