Good question, and I had that in mind when I thought about this. I'm not immune to violent impulses. There was a gym teacher I had in 7th grade who called a sad little girl in the class by a derisive nickname. I think I might hit him in the face if I ran into him tomorrow. And I think sometimes when something is wrong, and harmful, but you can't think how to explain what's wrong with the spin people put on the wrong thing to do, what the missing sense is, it makes me upset that way. I believe violence is wrong, but at some point you don't care, you don't care if you are wrong.

   I think somewhere above were some comments about the media always quoting the stupidest people. I can safely say I've never been present at an interview that came out remotely accurate in print. My wife was interviewed about directing theatre and came out sounding like an evil genius with hopes for global domination--nothing like what she said. (As it happens, she does have a plan for global domination, but she would never let that slip out, until everything's in place.) When your identity and voice are usurped and carelessly toyed around with it can piss you off deeply, it can sicken you to your soul. The only thing I can imagine soldiering for is to protect voices, and free expression. Ibsen's Doll's House made a mark on me, not so much as a "feminist" thing, but because it's really about the genderless humanity of forming a self, having a story to tell yourself, about yourself, before you die.

And work matters that way too. A part of me feels sympathy for those madmen who are dismissed after decades at a job, and go nuts. It's a part of a person, what they do a long time. People don't really pay serious attention to how anyone else does their job, the observational tools are mostly nonsense, and it goes up and down that way. It's been shown that abusive bosses who improve their behaviors are still perceived the same, regardless. People form an impression, keep it, and don't trouble themselves to let anybody grow, or fix a misunderstanding.

I'd be too ashamed to come to blows over my own interests, but when someone next to you gets rolled over by the machinery of stupidity, carelessness, fake reason and glib mis-representation, you feel an impulse to slap somebody. I suppose I feel that there are forms of covert, soft-handed, non-physical but very real violence, that provoke violent feelings. The roots of not caring are the roots of violence, high-jest havin' fun crime is part of the cause of desperate hard low crime.