This has been such a weird week. Everything has felt weird, unsettled, tilting, shifting. Now I hear about this terrorist plot that was foiled….I can’t say I’m surprised to hear about it.

I was at a party a few weeks ago and there was a man there who is, well, I’ll call him a kind of code breaker. Of course, he was very professional, he takes his obligations to our government as a sacred trust. When you meet him you feel very good that such an honorable and good man is in such a sensitive position. He didn’t say anything at all, but he asked me a lot of questions – “What do liberals think about…whatever” – since apparently I’m the either only liberal he can bear to have a conversation with, or I may be the only one he knows. Anyway, there was just something about his “vibe” that made me very well aware that Al-Qaida and groups like them haven’t forgotten 9/11 any more than we have….not that blind, unreasoning haters need reasons to blow things up. Though these particular maniacs have tried to co-opt Islam to justify their violence, they’re just lovers of violence, chaos, and destruction, and have no more to do with God or any faith than any other gang of thugs on the street, without even the ghost of a code of honor.

My acquaintance can always see my point when I say that the best way to rid the world of such people is to expose their hypocrisy, educate and engage the people of the world so that even the most desperate would-be convert can see through their screaming rhetoric of hate. Sadly, even I can see my acquaintances point: that my way takes too long and that this may be a job for the army. I didn’t say I conceded it. I just said I could understand it.

Anyway, I hope they’ve got them all, these would-be blowers up of planes. I don’t think I’d be surprised if they haven’t. I’d just be horrified. What a world we live in!