Times Square - Cashew, Peanuts and Almonds.

The big news last night was the police in New York City preventing a poorly made truck bomb from going off - whether or not it would’ve gone off is an entirely different discussion but the mere fact that it might’ve gone off and the police caught it in time reinforces that they are in fact on their toes.

Yet, when I first heard the story, I didn’t think it would be an instance of some foreign national being behind such an action.

I say this because from the stream of email I receive on a regular basis it is fairly obvious the nuts are in season and by that I mean, people have confused opposition or political discourse with something entirely different. This is not a problem isolated to the right as many members of the left engaged in the same kind of behavior over the course of the last President’s term in office.

It’s really a bit sad.

It’s sad the people of this country aren’t mature enough to engage people with opposing views in intelligent conversation. It’s sad because it heralds the end of democracy. It’s sad because whoever you talk to believes fully and without hesitation they are entirely 100% right and the people who disagree with them 100% wrong.

You can’t have a democracy without dialog but we are stepping further and further away from being able to hold any discussion about the issues without rancor.

So, we get Timothy McViegh parking a truck in front of a federal office building  and we get people flying planes into the side of IRS buildings (and on this I can readily identify) but these actions aren’t the hallmark of a civilized and advanced nation – they are more in keeping with some backwater.

Much as we would like to paint the world as an unsafe place the underlying truth is reinforced once more by that sage comic character Pogo – yes my friends, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”