The glib words run out this morning, and I am tempted to run along with them. I heard the Vice President wasn’t precisely in charge of the border “situation,” whatever that is. The President seemed to be adamant about that the other day. But the “situation” on the border is “more complex” and one for which she is apparently not responsible. Instead, she has been directed to worry more about the international side to issue, and is responsible for making some countries most of us have never visited safe for free, transparent democratic growth and development.

I think we are all in favor of that, right? Isn’t that why over a million former citizens of El Salvador are already living here?

See, you start out trying to find something fun and slightly ironic to talk about and you wind up back with a “what the hell is going on” problem. The Editorial Staff was glum at this morning’s meeting. First, the donuts were gone. Then someone complained about getting safely from the parking lot outside the fence to the office. Someone else shushed them, and first proposed moving the parking inside the fence, which would solve one part of the problem but raised others.

“What is this? A gated community? That is hierarchic and inherently oppressive.” A series of shrugs around the table seemed to indicate agreement, or suppressed disagreement.

Instead, a small working group deliberated and proposed establishing a regimen in which valid employees would be provided a card proving their employment on the property, current state of vaccination, home address, recent contacts and photo.

“It is for safety!” one of our younger copy editors declared. There followed some animated discussion that for safety reasons were not recorded. The consensus opinion appeared to be that we could vote on the matter of identification, if we could identify those who had equity in the result of the polling. Accordingly, we decided that the vote should be safely determined in an a priori manner to ensure that the process worked properly.

Safety assured, we thought lunch might be a good idea. If we could assure someplace nearby was safe. That unfortunately led to more discussion, and hunger influenced the decision to order out. If we could find a delivery service with proper identification sufficient to stop at the liquor store on the way.

Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
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