Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.

He was a graduate of West Point, which is military academy that turns young men into homicidal maniacs for use in war.

That's what is was to be young - to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.

One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.

Then the lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. So it goes. Those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. The world was better off without them. And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt.

You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages--they haven't ended yet.