Author: Joel Levin

The recent events in the Capitol Building are so surprising, so unexpected, so unprecedented and, at this point, so foggy, that one hesitates to offer any early comments.

This is the Season of Pardons, the time at the end of the term of an executive, governor, or President, when for reasons no one seems to know, it is safe or appropriate or reasonable or prudent, or just plain a good idea, suddenly to pardon people or to commute their sentences, people who in some cases deserve pardons or commutations when the executive first assumed office, not as he or she was leaving it.

Those lucky enough to visit the Museo Del Prado – the justly revered museum of Spanish and European art in central Madrid – would encounter the stunning, terrifying, but mesmerizing painting, The Colossus.

We often try to make sense of the world, particularly those parts of the world that are unfamiliar, by comparing them to the things more familiar, things we know something about. We say something is like something else, someone reminds us of someone else, that situation is not unlike one we have seen before in certain relevant respects.

The news is horrifying, at once completely unexpected and entirely expected. It is a report of yet another human rights abuse, one of now so many that we are lost in the count of all the tortures, the mass killings, the human degradations, the endless cruelties.