Looking at ourselves reflected in the mirror of headline news

An Egyptian military court sentenced a 3 1/2 year-old boy to life in prison for murdering three people — two years ago, at age one. Apparently, the court confused the boy with his 51 year old uncle.

A 16 year-old Swedish girl was rescued from ISIS, where she had been held captive after she traveled to Syria with a boyfriend she met online.  ” I don’t know anything about Islam or ISIS or something,” the girl explained, “so I didn’t know what he meant. Then he said he want(ed) to go to ISIS, and I said OK, no problem.”

Republican party voters are poised to nominate a cartoon caricature of a candidate who has no chance of winning the general election… or, even worse, might actually win.

Star Trek fans are all abuzz with excitement over the prospect of the forthcoming movie including the character of Demora, daughter of Hikaru Sulu from the original series.

According to Amnesty International, human rights deteriorated globally over the course of 2015, much to nobody’s surprise.

I’ll date myself here, as I imagine these headline stories read by Chevy Chase of the original Saturday Night Live cast, along with the perennial breaking news that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Equal parts of the surreal, the maddening, the farcical, the tragic, and the inane mix together in a cocktail akin to Long Island Iced Tea, blending five toxic shots into an innocent-tasting libation of bizarre banality that leaves your head spinning before you get to the end.

The inability of our culture to discern reality from illusion is what allows evil free rein.  And the problem grows more acute, literally from day to day.

If we want to reclaim clarity, we have to start by wanting it a lot more urgently.