Modest Proposal: Embrace the “Evil”

Satan Presenting His City to the Children by Michael Hutter

I was raised in a town made famous for fighting Nazis in court, so we wouldn’t have to fight them in the streets. I went away to college, returned to a cable TV internship and then moved away to a small suburban town where the residents were supposed to bow down to every idea and opinion of the guys who inherited third generation family businesses that they hadn’t yet run into the ground or sold out. It was there that I started my first newspaper, which ultimately suffered from the common lack of advertising support from local business. But we scored the biggest business in town, the local hospital, with a regular four-color full page ad and managed well enough outside the town’s borders to meet about four years of deadlines and help sustain an informed electorate while maintaining a solid commitment to strict journalistic ethics.

A spring thaw sometime between projects led to a protest vigil in the gravel parking lot outside a gun show at the County Fairgrounds near the end of a nice bike ride on the local mixed-use trail system. Gunhuggers outnumbered the vigilant but that figured, considering it was very much their turf. They reminded me of another religious cult I used to encounter back on the old college campus, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. I am not a spiritual person but the Hare Krishnas were at least into some kind of enlightenment, such as it is…