The day is December-fine here in
Arizona—calm, sunny, somewhere in the low 70’s. And the boys are out in full
force this morning with their rumbling and roaring dissonance cloaking the
heavens. Without any intended sexism, by “the boys” I mean the men and women
who fly training missions in their F-35’s out of Luke Air Force Base here in
the West Valley. Flying in twos and threes, they create such noise that all
conversation is suspended until they pass out of sight. Many of us in Arizona
like to call it the sound of freedom. Isn’t it sad to think that ours or anyone
else’s freedom has to be guarded by such military force that no one would dare
to try to take it? You’d think that individual freedom would be the lifelong
goal of everyone on earth. But it isn’t. Most of those who live under the iron
hand of one dictator or another have no idea what individual freedom means.
Does it mean that each of us would be free to do anything we want? No. We would
still have to abide by the legal principle that your freedom ends where my nose
begins. But the freedom to do and think and say anything we want so long as it
causes no harm to anyone else is well worth fighting and dying for. So, fly on
Luke Fly-boys and -girls. The sounds you make are welcome to my ears and are a
welcome reminder to me that I still have my individual freedom as long as I
continue to know where everyone’s nose is.
Stephen Colbert again. I wonder if
Colbert is ever frightened by what could happen to him if one of the Trump
supporters decided to take him out for all his jibes against their hero, the
Donald. He probably is, just a little anyway, but he never mentions it. Much as
I admire him for his intelligence and his comic genius, I wonder if he realizes
that he might be a contributor to what Trump calls "Fake News.” Colbert
loves to highlight some of Trump’s tweets to demonstrate the man’s fondness for
exaggeration or downright lying or his ignorance, especially when it comes to
spelling (for example, the comic “smocking gun” Trump in a recent tweet mentions not once but twice). But Colbert doesn’t always make it clear which
tweets are actually Trump’s and which have been slightly or grossly doctored
for the sake of humor. A lot of viewers would take them all as true when in
fact some would be “fake.” I also heard him say to one of his guests that he
had read The Lord of the Rings fifty
times, and he wasn’t going for humor. C’mon, Stephen. No one, not even the
nerdiest Tolkein fan, has read The Lord
of the Rings fifty times. Long before the fiftieth reading, the reader somewhere
in the twentieth or thirtieth would have spit up both Gollum and the ring and
never gone back for a second helping.
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