It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research and study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.

-Aldous Huxley, nearing death

There is a penumbra over the land. People are in a foul mood and no one is smiling. Almost everyone is embarrassed by what we have recently witnessed in America.

As I write during the third week of October 2013, our government has just resumed full operations after being partially shut down because of the failure to agree on how the country’s funds should be spent. The dispute originally took the form of a demand to defund and therefore cripple the Affordable Care Act, but soon morphed into so many additional ultimatums no one could keep track of them. The pathetic deal that has just been reached will finance the government only through January 15 and lift the nation’s debt ceiling only through February 7, at which time we will have the opportunity to experience this farce all over again.1

Although they are now streaming back to work, around 40% of the nation’s 2 million federal workers have been furloughed for more than 2 weeks. The consequences to the nation’s public health […]