This made want to once again don cap and gown and again suffer my mother's bragging about me to her retrograde friends. No doubt about it, the risk to reality is now the challenge of our age; a risk that has few recruits signing up to battle against it. Now, in this time of not just war, but in this time of an attack of government upon its own citizens, we may never even get to realize a battle is underway.

I for one didn't know my daily routine would have to include being prepared to speak truth at every turn. But today you can't even get your bank balance via phone unless you're willing to argue with someone who firmly believes they're job includes denying simple facts. The issue, though, is whether rhetoric alone is capable of righting this imbalance.

Well, even if it isn't I'm still committed to the dignity that can alone be gotten by the search for truth.

I don't give a damn, in other words, if the President and the smile that appears on his face whenever he believes he's one upped those who see thru him, thinks he has me beaten. What he's miscalculated is his own effort's bringing me relief. As stated in this article crisis become adjusted to, ignored even. Ergo: The President and his constant promotion of crisis produce ignorance on a scale that has him become not only unnoticed but irrelevant.

Let him gut the entire civilized world if he wants. With my last breath I will be asking questions. Let him secretly saber rattle with Yellow, Red and Orange alerts all at the same time. His is a child's world. Mine is an adult's. Facts matter, and if he claims otherwise that only proves his immaturity. An immaturity highlighted, not righted, by his power.

Hell let him play God too. In fact, while he's busy convincing many of his blessed nature is the exact same time my entire being will have proved what's been obvious to me because of my belief in curiosity followed by careful study.

The President is an abused child stuck in a framework that forces a cycle of pain to himself only because of his need to believe that others owe him allegiance.

In other words, the President is a loser.

And that's the truth!

You should have given Robert Iler props for his portrayal of A.J. After all, he's got this putz thing down to a science. He's coming off as a modern day Nelson, i.e., Rabbit's limp and self-absorbed son in Updike's classic "Run Rabbit Run" anthology. To be that young and let oneself be set with such an image is courageous from a career standpoint. Plus, somehow you still see Iler as a mob boss’s son.

Credit to Chase and his staff in a similar way. Cutting the cord of Tony's therapy was almost forgotten as needing to be done. Glamorizing Tony's lifestyle got in the way of psychology as metaphor for dealing with a complex world. Therapy, after all, has no solutions only suggestions. But we ignore its attitude of there being a modern answer to the ills human beings bring upon themselves at our own peril. Chase captured leaving that behind but only after making sure Soprano was victim to its approach. A heated departure from one's therapist is today's equivalent of ex-communication.

It's much more than saying to your Head-Shrinker, "Hey, you suck!"

Melfi was invested and conflicted, as any therapist should be, and may have acted immorally, as therapists often do. We never see them in that light though. We see them instead as mad scientists prescribing medication when they're wrong. But they’re guideposts to understanding and when they're wrong they are in violation of the message to modernity's meaning only they're supposed to be masters of. Melfi should have simply said Tony's my patient so his background is irrelevant.

But she didn't because when things got difficult she took the other route available.

And if that doesn't scream how we relate to our fellow man nothing does.

The hope is that Chase will finish with flourish along similar lines. In other words, Tony doesn't have to come off as loser. That's the easy way out, too. In an age of failed institutions collapsed by cynicism and/or self-interest we should be able to finally see as success someone who stops at nothing. Even though they haven't a clue that's the way their personality is set.

I don't know how this thing will end.

But I hope it ends with Tony smiling.

I hope after dealing with a family that may shoot to kill that somebody who relishes the failure of a bitter uncle, rebelled against a repellant mother, and puts a foot in the ass of a whiney son comes out on top!