Dear God,

“Most of the statements made about the solitary life are sheer nonsense. I can’t think of anything less likely to make person indifferent to other people. Quite the contrary. I think that the business of herding people together is what makes them hate and misunderstand each other, or teaches them indifference.” Merton

Maybe we should make it mandatory for our politicians to take retreats in silence and solitude for at least a month at a time. The ones who could stand to be alone with themselves for that long could stay in the game. Surely this would be the end of Cruz’s and Trump’s political careers. Hillary and Jeb would be fine as long as their teams told them which persona they should take on the retreat. Bernie would have no trouble; it would be like most of his political career — a lone man crying out in the desert, make way for the, well, not the Lord really, but at least a populist wakeup call to the specific class warfare we’ve been living under since the late 70’s and the corporate response to Nader.

But who wants to talk about politics? Not me. 

Let’s see, I met with Paul last night. Don’t want to talk about that either.

I looked at porn yesterday. Don’t want to talk about that either.

I should probably talk about that someday, though. Not sure what I’ll say. I know that in some ways certain forms of it can be liberating, but for the most part it still seems to me to be about objectification, power, and even misogyny. What a bummer. Maybe I’m wrong (please be wrong, please be wrong!), but I don’t think so. I try to look at the lightest stuff out there. Maybe a strip tease or something. It’s not like I’m watching gang bangs.

A friend and I spoke the other night about what it must be like growing up with the internet. I’m not surprised our youth keep shooting one another. A couple of weeks ago I tried to search for something hot. I don’t remember what I entered into Google exactly but it was something uncreative like hot stripping women or something. I had to go to the third page of the search results just to find a link to something that wasn’t along the lines of “nasty girls taking cock from all sides” or some shit. What kind of a world are we living in when it’s easier to find sadistic and misogynistic hardcore porn than it is to find a classy video of some nice boobies and a beautiful beaver? Now there’s a spiritual question for you God.

This isn’t to make some bald claim that school shootings are somehow caused by hardcore porn or Google searches for boobies. I’m not that idiotic. It’s only to point to one of the many ways our society, even if only implicitly, celebrates violence and dehumanization. It’s also to admit that I participate in it at times. When it comes to school shootings, stricter gun laws seem like a pretty obvious place to start. For those right-wing American’s that think Obama’s out to take their guns because he’s a secrete Muslim or that somehow the Second Amendment protects their rights to own semi-automatic weapons, I say get it over with and form your anti-government pseudo-religious or political militias already. You ever heard of David Koresh? It worked out real well for that guy, and the Feds didn’t even have drones back then.