I've taken a hiatus from politics for about a month now. I've been feeling like a character in Robert Heinlein's novel, Stranger In A Strange Land. I don't "grok" a lot of today's happenings, and the criminal political behavior has become so tolerated as just the way government and business do business now. But, that's okay. I've tuned-up the high fidelity throughout my home with very little computer interface. No i-pod or jingling ring-tone cellphone reality for me. To be honest I've never been a big fan of the whole portable music experience with the exception of a great car stereo system. The Sony Walkman(TM) craze that started this obsession of individual isolation, with those little earplugs, or earphones, on walkers-bikers-joggers-cubicle dwellers never did it for me. It seemed like a clever way to have people avoid one another rather than communicate, and the sound was terrible besides.

This growing isolation from community has taken an ugly turn. Without peer review we argue alone. We play video games one on none. We glean information through the Internet on our own, and can usually be seen driving solo in our singular vehicle environment. Today's cars, much like our homes are curious odes to individual retreat, complete with individual climate controls and entertainment options for each occupant. We have become turtles with hard shells not easy to penetrate and adverse to exploration.

It is not hard to understand that we now consider ourselves separate and unequaled. The small testaments to communal social enterprise finds like minded viewpoints and opinions that when challenged usually means excommunication at church, club, sporting event or workplace. Gates close off the public to little suburban developments where sameness is regimented by design, color, landscape and garbage can placement. This culture is so withdrawn that a growing number of parents homeschool little Jane and Johnny to avoid contamination with the rest of the public. I find this trend of turtle-ship ominous. It becomes pointless to try and engage in discussions with those of differing perspectives who wish only to maintain their vision of hide-behind-the-rock reality, who simply do not wish to reach beyond their shell.

This self imposed isolation by people might be a reason so many now simply shoot the messenger presenting alternate takes from their defined comfort zone of reality. You see this in the stupefying responses by these outraged turtle-people at newspapers, magazines and television when confronted with the disordered reality of the brutal day to day that is life. The government censored all photos of coffins because the pictures could harm the war effort. What does that indicate to you? When did less information and less knowledge become the preferred methods for making decisions? When did adult become child? When did the presentations of scientific research cause a vast personal attack on the presenters? We never need to examine and think about the data, that would require research and reading, and that is something busy Americans in their controlled habitats plugged into laptops, cellular phones and i-pods have no time for.

As the walls go up around this entire nation seeking withdrawal from the rest of the world, and as illiteracy becomes the national statistical norm there will be fewer messengers to present just the facts, and fewer to understand the facts when presented. When the Wall came down in Berlin we applauded freedom. What do we applaud as we erect our own Wall on the border? Fear?