On the Pierce County Deputies

I hope the deputies both make it and achieve full recovery. Five dead officers since Halloween, and now two more wounded are tragic at a number of different levels.

Hopefully, the usual anti-gun "dancing in the blood" can be kept to a minimum, but that may be setting an unreasonable standard of civilization for that crowd.

Regrettably, the media are already panic-mongering and employing "wild west" and "combat zone" comparison to gin up the level of public frenzy, so it's a bit late to hope for restraint or journalistic ethics from that quarter.

As we do Depression Lite and FDR redux, we can only expect things to get worse as existing criminals and already desperate folks go screaming round the bend wreaking havoc and mayhem (literally and figuratively) along the way.

The next few years are going to be a rough ride, made rougher in many ways by certain political groups regrettable beliefs regarding the improveability of human nature, and the ability of the demonstrably bad or mad to reform - where, however dismaying, quarantine is a better solution (and easier to undo than execution, in cases of "oops").