Back in January, I was having lunch at the Midtown Sundries restaurant. The news had come in that Benizir Bhutto had been killed a day or two before.

I guess "assassinated" is the word, but let's stick with "killed" for now. It just feels more appropriate.

Anyways, Holly, my favorite bartender, with whom I have shared dozens of lunches over the past year or two, and I were transfixed by the images of the mourners passing her casket around on it's way from street to street, eventually from shrine to graveyard, I think. It's a ritual I am not unfamiliar with, but, as with so many religious rituals, I simply don't get it. I know the idea is everybody gets to touch the casket before burial, and that somehow honors both the living and the dead, that somehow this incurs some sort of exchange of (for lack of a better word) karma. But to me it just amounts to one big, ugly crush, people trampling each other for a chance at grabbing glory for the sake of glory, and I can't seem to become convinced that it's at all about honoring the dead. At all.

But that's me.

So anyways, that's where this started out. What it's about it the nature of politics, as it's reflected in human nature. I don't think I want to nap it down any more than that. The temptation is to do the usual dichotomy, say that either you think politics is the most important, blood-worthy thing in the world, or you can't be bothered and you're genuinely offended that people think this crap is worth living or dying-- or killing and maiming, for that matter. But more than that, it's about confusion. I remember having the distinct feeling that none of these hairy guys shoving the coffin around would have any idea what I meant if I had the chance to say what was actually on my mind, which was, truthfully, "Dude! WTF!?!"