Socrates certainly saw behind the curtain and was not treated gingerly by the Republic. There are no new things under the sun.

Thank you to everyone for participating in this dialogue of hard truths. The points have been so brilliantly made that it would be redux to add my own words.

Great Nietzche quote. I can relate to it. I recently had my two front teeth extracted. That "stolen teeth" line makes me laugh.

Operant conditioning raised to the level of religion. Mary Shelley was never more timely. The most inconsequential particle must be taken and magnified while the most vain glorious misdeeds remain ignored. But of course this has never been news. The time merely arrived for the parade of misfortune to lose its tedious trappings of secrecy. It was there under the skin since the 1930's, irritating the antennae of the race, until it burst into fully diseased form in America ala Camus via the two Bush administrations.

Mr. Keillor, you are a magnet for the cnyics, but neither I nor they would ever have gotten a job with the prestigous New Yorker or with trendy Salon. As Aesop would say, many of your posters are merely sharpening their fangs on a file.

With the widespread gay bashing I have seen in the workplace, I can understand the great courage it takes to make a stand and be seen as a human being rather than being dismissed as an "other." Employers, and this is at the upper levels of management, still find it amusing and plausible to openly dis and discriminate against gay and lesbian workers. Ironic when some of their best workers fall into this category. Such practices became blatant during the past eight years. But then again, I was working in the Bible Belt and Orange County, CA during that time. Some of us have all the luck.

You are right that as soon as minority LGBT individuals begin to relate to their opponents, a shift will occur. It's that minor miracle that happens when people of heart risk themselves and find they are not facing a brick wall after all.

What we call evil is always outside cultural mores which are relative. Evil is not absolute, and it certainly does not dwell within the human soul. That woman's intentions were clearly moral but substance abuse does not allow a clear head. Again, we see the human propensity for scapegoats. And again, we will not hear her side of the story. She is considered a monster. And yes, I was morally aghast and inauthentic when I heard the story. We are all inauthentic when we deny our humanity by denying the humanity of another and condemn a fellow suffering human being out of hand.

Glenn, thank you for completing the picture.

Glenn has brought home most eloquently the fact that the truth itself has been marginalized. I mourn the fact that we have strayed so far from the ideals of our founding fathers. The result has been widespread and tragic loss that the gaslighting of America by the radical right prevents many from realizing. The adherence of the media to the standards of a woefully corrupt government provide our agitprop. While as a country we have historically strayed from our moral compass, we have always tried to bring ourselves back into balance. That has tragically halted, and to borrow a loosely quoted line from Yeats, I fear the "falcon can no longer hear the falconer."

I believe that the increase in police acts of "random" violence against U.S. citizens is possibly a reflection of the combination of national intelligence agencies with law enforcement that is enabled by the fusion centers. These fusion centers exist in virtually every state. They have access to a huge national database and represent the fusion of law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies. The ACLU website has specific information on these fusion centers.

Since law enforcement is now being "fused" with intelligence services, might they not begin to adopt the same ideology as the intelligence agencies? Namely, might not law enforcement feel as equally empowered?

My problem is not that fusion centers were created in the name of national security but the fact that increased surveillance and torture powers have already been misused by the FBI and CIA. This stretching of the envelope would carry down to the levels of law enforcement. Could we already be seeing the effects of this?

Mr. Keillor made several excellent points in this essay. Regardless of his stance on not holding the Bush administration accountable, he is obviously speaking out against the banality of evil (as defined by Hannah Arendt during the Nuremberg trials). He also points out that the American public will lunge for the "gossip" value in a news item regardless of its real heinousness. I also agreed with him on the fact that an individual can experience a moment of rage and envision some ghastly image from the subconscious without having any intention of carrying out the act. It's a part of normal human existence. I applaud Mr. Keillor for seeing the goodness that was a probable part of the "road rage" man's existence.

I believe Mr. Keillor is ambivalent about holding the Bush administration accountable or he wouldn't be leaning so heavily toward the evils that arise from the ignorance of cruelty. He is wrestling with the moral problem of a country in crisis. He is also a journalist who is under considerable constraints. Perhaps he is not so deserving of the harsh words directed against him.