Super Bowl Update

This morning when I sat down to write this blog, I just couldn't figure out what to focus on. It felt as though I were experiencing a kind of existential bafflement, a free-floating puzzlement.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that health care, it seems, is headed back to the House even though it has already been signed into law by President Obama.

Huh?

Or maybe it's a hangover from reading about death threats against Democratic members of Congress, or about the severed gas line at Virginia's 5th District Congressman Tom Perriello's brother's house. Why, oh why, would anyone think such behavior moves this country forward? Bo Perriello has four small children, for Pete's sake!

Or maybe it's anticipation of the likelihood that a significant number of people will just refuse to consider that DNA analysis has possibly revealed a lost human relative from 40,000 years ago  -- as reported in the current issue of Nature and on NPR.

Or this baffling example of how ubiquitous partisan politics has become in American society, as reported in The New York Times.

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

Or, who knows, maybe it's just fatigue from fundraising (uh, with respect, you supported WMRA yet? 1-800-677-9672 or wmra.org.)

Experiencing existential bafflement is not fun. Yet thankfully it's a malaise with a cure. One that I, personally, think has been best prescribed by the Dixie Chicks. . . .