Laugh or Cry

"Stupidity has a knack of getting its way." Albert Camus

Sometimes you just don't know whether to laugh or cry at the human predicament. While we rant or rave about the deficit and health care reform and the wars in Iraq and Afganistan and the Tiger Wood's soap opera, lives of quiet desperation stumble along through this vale of tears. Like Cormac McCarthy's sheriff said in his novel, No Country for Old Men , "You just can't make this stuff up." This line came to mind the other day as I scanned some headlines from around the world.

Belgium: two would be ATM machine thieves blew themselves up after miscalculating the amount of dynamite needed to do the job;

Russia: a 400 pound thirteen year old died of suffocation after snacking while watching a television special about himself and the plight of obese children.

USA (Florida): A party animal, after imbibing his fair share of the keg, found himself stalled in traffic and in need of relief. Not suffering the embarassment of a shy bladder, he got out of his car, placed a hand on the divder and leaped over to the other side promptly falling sixty feet to his death. No doubt he expected better footing.

Brazil: A thirty-eight year old former Miss Argentina died from gluteoplasty complications. As one of her many admirers lamented, "She lost everything to have a slightly firmer backside."

Ah, the bells, the bells.

Does the wise man laugh when fools cry and cry when fools laugh?

Do we laugh at these fools, or cry for them?

Do we find a place in our hearts for pity?

And what about the fools who would destroy America? They sell our posterity down the river of unimaginable debt to secure the financial support of their co-conspirators and the votes of their imbecilic supporters. They strive for a government run health care system in spite of the abject failure of such systems around the world. They wage 'wars of democracy' in lands where tribal rule has held sway for ten thousand years and the concept of democracy is as appealing as last week's fish. They splash the misadventures of a serial adulterer over the front pages to distract a gullible public from the more important news of how the country is going to hell in a handbasket.

Do we laugh at these fools or cry for them?
Do we demand a Corsican satisfaction?

Do we scream out with Kant, "Let justice be done though the heavens fall", or commiserate with Dostoevsky, who , in exasperation, stammered, "Man, man, one cannot live quite without pity."

It's enough to make a grown man cry...or laugh...

Maybe the only significant question is: does man deserve pity?

Let us hope God thinks so.