did a great job to clarify any possible questions I had still on Saturday. Glad to see that my first instinctive reactions are fully in compliance with Bennis analysis. But she made it so clear, as well as Bill Curry. Can't embed yet the video clip, but well worth to look at it once they become available on you tube.
Or watch it directly here. Transcripts are available at the site.

is half of 42, and 42 is the Ultimate Answer To The Ultimate Question Of Life, The Universe, And Everything, and so I suppose that would mean 21 is half the answer.

Emma Goldman: "I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck."

All of the rain is still always falling, and so I must needs put on my Sailin' Shoes, as set forth in the song penned by Frank Zappa alumnus Lowell George.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29gjTWwycRM]

a lot in this latest essay by Chris Hedges.

Before I excerpt some paragraphs just a little thing, which made me feel so uncomfortable and almost crying. So, last evening, having been the whole day inside, I needed to move my legs and get fresh air, so I went to a local tex mex restaurant that is frequented a lot by a rainbow coalition of people in my neighborhood. I wanted a take-out and couldn't decide what to get, because I wanted to stay at a price of around ten dollars and no matter what I ended up with meals around 13 dollars. These days I have to count my dollars. I didn't see some family coming in behind me and all of the sudden a daddy kind of guy with his family entourage just shouted to the cashier: "Here, that's an order on me" and handed over his credit card. I turned around and didn't know what happened to me. Of course I said: "No way, thank you, but no, I won't accept that". And then he cheerfully said "Yes of course, it's on me, I want to celebrate, my son here just graduated from UMD and we are so happy, it's on me." After a couple of minutes back and forth of "No, no way" and "Yes, sure it's on us" he started to ask me where I am from, at the same time I realized his wife wearing a Hijab, so I asked him back the same question. From Syria, he said, from Germany, I answered.

Then I started to ask if he had family in Syria and if they are okay etc. And he started saying 'thank you Germany for doing so much for us' ... Oh my God, I wanted to faint in embarrassment. And I said, I am not happy with Germany to join other nations to support the bombardments over Syria, but I was not sure, if he got that right. This guy was so happy over his three kids and his one son having graduated, nothing could bother him. The wife smiled all over her face and the man even said he is sorry for all the trouble Syria has caused... Oh my, I couldn't believe it. What kind of trouble did Syria cause? I started almost to well up. So, I had no chance to not take his offer and accepted it and when he finally got seated in the restaurant, I ordered the dessert for the whole family and made sure they got it served, after I left with my take-out. This little scene was so "telling" to me.

A Syrian immigrant family in the US, obviously successfully professionally and raising their kids fully integrated in the US system with great outcomes, feels he has to apologize for the "troubles" Syria has caused, feels he has to thank a German lady for what Germany did to help the Syrians, showed his wonderful generosity, while in fact he should not have to feel compelled to do any of those things. Syria didn't cause troubles, Germany didn't do anything other than trying to accept the refugees and both countries the US and Germany play the same war games and try to bomb the heck out of ISIS in Syria and work on getting Assad out of power. And this man felt compelled to "help me eat my favorite dish at an American tex mex diner". Gosh, I felt so ashamed.

Now with that in mind, read Hedges article:

The threefold rise in hate crimes against Muslims since the Paris and San Bernardino attacks and the acceptance of hate speech as a legitimate form of political discourse signal the morbidity of our civil society. The body politic is coughing up blood.
...
The mounting attacks on Muslims, which will become a contagion when there is another catastrophic terrorist attack, are only the beginning.
...
We are entering a new dark age, an age of idiocy and blood.
...
Our failure to curb this hate speech will haunt us. Once a civil society tolerates the intolerant, as Karl Popper wrote, “the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
...
The anti-Muslim virus begins slowly. Step by step the hate talk moves from insults, stereotyping and untruths to incendiary calls for vigilantes to attack women wearing the hijab, men wearing kufis, mosques, Islamic centers and schools, and Muslim-owned businesses.
...
But soon all marginalized groups will be at risk. Such a process is what happened in the Weimar Republic. It is what happened in Yugoslavia. It is what happened in Israel.

Hedges quotes Kirkegaard:
"The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control."

The indiscriminate violence unleashed by the United States against Muslim communities in the Middle East has at the same time radicalized whole populations, which are bombed and otherwise terrorized daily.

“Obama talks about the hateful, vengeful ideology we are up against,” Yusuf said, “but he is not addressing the hate that hate produced. The current presentation of the conflict is irrational—as if Muslims hate us for our freedoms and our way of life.

That's surely true for online daily press of all sorts as well.

Oh, well too much in this article that is worth quoting. Read it yourself, if you feel inclined.