A one minute video of a kitten having a nightmare and being comforted by her cat mother gets 51,640,359 views because it’s cute (it is, check it out) and because it adorably shows us what we all want– someone to calm our fears in the middle of the night.  Love is the only thing that really matters, on the way to death, though we live in a world obsessed with the “bottom line”.   Love and the “bottom line” are often at odds.  Guess who usually wins?  The result is sometimes a heavily armed “gunman” acting out unbearable pain.

It will surprise nobody to learn that Antonin Scalia’s brilliant lawyer son, Eugene Scalia,  is the lead lawyer attacking Dodd-Frank’s weak-ass, loophole ridden attempt to regulate the super-lucrative government backed gambling house banks, too big to fail, that enriched themselves enormously while sucking almost every drop of blood out of the economy that sustains it.  Eugene Scalia skillfully drives a tank through the loopholes in the law that require a thorough “cost/benefit analysis” before the government may place any limitation on these monster profit machines.  After all, shouldn’t masters of the universe be able to pay themselves whatever they like?  And why is it their responsibility if people are stupid, sign contracts and lose their homes or their pensions?

You can be sure Justice Scalia is very proud of Eugene, probably hugs him warmly at family gatherings.  Is that not love?

Would it surprise you to learn that the lead attorney for Monsanto, a bland, mild-mannered but deadly mongoose, is Dick Cheney’s son-in-law?  I’m sure the two are very close, share drinks and jokes at family gatherings.  Probably shot a few quail together, I’d wager.  Neither man feels responsible for the enormous damage their actions create because they are following the noble creed that is woven into the American Dream:  prevail.

But this is not the kind of love I’m talking about.  This kind of selectively blind love is closer to death.   The love I’m talking about does not abide the suffering of others.   It is rare, and the key to a calm and productive life, and it spreads like your proverbial wildfire when it touches a person.  That’s the love I’m going for.