You should be surprised because I am a Constitutionalist and an advocate of the law.

I'm not sure that I agree there are good points here, at all. The author seems to be arguing that non-combatants don't know anything about war, and should resign themselves to only accepting analysis of war that comes from combatants, which is obviously nonsense. Do I think vets have valuable experience and insight…

He was also effectively rewarded and lionized for his unrepentant views, which you have to believe encouraged them. (That might be restating your last sentence, but I thought it needed to be more explicit)

1. The "America you know" is the same country I have lived my entire life in, and it's governed by laws designed to protect both the guilty and the innocent from vigilante, lynch mob justice you're advocating for. It doesn't make those laws perfect, but there's absolutely no way that this mythical "America you know"…

Whether a television is necessary to survival is irrelevant; the fact is that we do not punish thieves with death in this country, and thieves who are accused of theft are afforded a trial, after which, they are sentenced according to the laws that govern your state.

The last good performances I can remember from Depp were Secret Window in 2004 and Sweeney Todd in 2007, though I realize that most people hated the latter.

Admittedly, I don't give a shit about football at all, but I keep one eye on the games on Sundays at the bar for exactly this reason. But who the hell doesn't know anything about beer?

Wouldn't that maybe help, in this particular circumstance? (And god, I fucking hate that I even have to ask that, and recognize that underlines your point)

Oh, thoroughly believable. Horribly depressing, saddening, and existential dread-inducing. But believable.

I agree with your second part (about the explanation), but I also agree with Diana's original point about that part ramping up the horror of the entire situation, and thus, improbably, making an absolutely horrible situation somehow even worse.

This only works sparingly. My (otherwise pretty reasonable) boss used to have 2x/month big, painfully boring staff meetings, in which everyone was expected to attend and participate, in person, no exceptions. He'd purposefully schedule it when everyone's calendar was clear to thwart precisely this behavior. Declining…

My father used to own a small engineering company, and before every meeting, he'd estimate the collective salary of everyone in the room per-minute, and, every ten minutes, write up on the whiteboard how much the meeting was costing them (because, engineer). They didn't have meetings very often.

Somewhat tangentially; if you're in a "training" session that's conducted by actual professional trainers, and designed by professionals, and you find yourself roped into really stupid group exercises or like, kindergarten-level games, please be assured that was not the instructional designer's idea.

You have to be really careful with this one; if I'm having my staff meeting with my employees, and we all know each other, cracking a joke is fine. If we're meeting with someone higher up the chain than I am, you had better be a goddamn good joker, or I will forbid you from ever speaking in a meeting again.

Pretty much; though, I actually manage a team of creatives (instructional designers), so when it's my staff meeting, my staff had better be there. However, any of the other useless meetings my employees get invited to on a regular basis are totally up to discretion.

This only works if you're pretty non-essential to begin with. Like, if I have a staff meeting and someone says that (pressing deadlines excluded), this is absolutely the wrong answer.

"Let's take a look and see what we can do [something I have no intention of doing]. I don't want to commit to anything yet [note: ever], but let's see what we can figure out [places call which will never be returned, thus avoiding responsibility until at least the next meeting]"

As the Boss, regarding No. 5, yes, I will do exactly this if you shirk your responsibilities publicly in a meeting.

That's the problem with an awful lot of American business sectors in a nutshell.

I'm sympathetic to your point, but I have to disagree, if nothing else for the reason that we simply don't know how often this happens. As Deadspin/Regressing have pointed out, there is no federal data collecting how many instances of police shootings there are every year. What we do know is that it's possible that…