Cut Out for Us

 324.

I lock up the cabin and stash the key in the usual hiding spot with no attempt at secrecy. Preston our limo driver has been waiting patiently for fifteen minutes as we procrastinate on departure, milking the tranquility and guessing the color of alarm code back in DC to be somewhere between red and red hot.

"I think we made some progress," Mustang says as a way of offering a farewell, bridging the gap from the past to present.

"I think so too, but I still wish we could extend the stay, as they say in hospitality circles."

The return trip is quiet with melancholy as we each mentally review what was accomplished, and how that might segue into the enormity of work still to be done. We had agreed to spend three hours the day prior in solitary confinement; nothing but our laptops, to complete the homework assignment ordered by Julie. After an initial - and failed - attempt to itemize the plethora of potential ways and means to skin the terrorist cat, it seemed to me that one tactic, perhaps too general, perhaps not, held commonalities with all the others, and that thread, however thin, linked all the possibilities, probabilities and certainties and their solutions together like the yarn wound inside a baseball. Resisting the urge to be clever, I simply asked what I considered to be a legitimate question:

"Do we over-provide terrorists, especially those homegrown, with reason and/or cause enough to consider extreme and violent political response?"

Unable to resist answering my own rhetorical question, I asked another; "And if so, what deterrents can we initiate to lesson the likelihood of violent domestic terrorism in response?" In the fine print of a smaller type-size and italicized font, I offered a few heavy-handed suggestions.

Make hate speech a felony. Set examples.
Prosecute the rampant racism in the military.
Level the playing field on the streets.
End systemic policies of blatant discrimination.  
Make justice colorblind.
Dramatically separate church and state again.  
Lesson income disparity.
Stop for profit incarceration.
Allow the people true social and political representation.
Get big corporate money out of politics.
Tighten gun laws.
Keep military grade weapons off the streets.
Require all 'extreme' media outlets to scroll a disclaimer stating their comments to be opinion and entertainment, not news and unbiased, objective facts.
Educate the people. Free collage tuition. Retire student debt.
Open group discussion.
Provide the haters an alternative to it.
Offer those marginalized incentives to choose peaceful solutions.

We had agreed to share each others' work. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at Mustang's level of sophistication. Hers was a brilliant one-page treatise on criminal justice and contemporary police tactics. Her response to mine, she guessing that I willingly took the chance of my left-leaning, utopian point-of-view missing the target, was, however, the response I was hoping for.

"We've got our work cut out for us, haven't we?"

"We do, and I'm not holding my breath in the hope that we lose our jobs as a result of humanity's sudden total enlightenment."

"So we remain the last line of defense?"

"We do and we are."

"Still, you should start your screen play. I love the premise."

"There will be time. But not just yet."