The ink was barely dry on the Declaration of Independence before all kinds of folks started lining up to get their piece of the “all men are created equal/endowed by certain inalienable rights” proclamation.  In hindsight, the rhetoric of a few, powder-wigged elitists, as magnanimous as they may have seemed, was never meant to be taken literally.  Certainly, slaves didn’t count…or women…or native Americans…and although we’ve protested, civilly warred, and legislated from time to time to create more fanciful descriptions about just how equal we all are…well, we’re not.  Fundamentally, we’re very different.  We’re physically and intellectually diverse by nature, a crazy quilt of first, second and third generation ethnicities and socially caste primarily by circumstance of birth and geography.  The American geographical happenstance is quite apparently luckier than many others, but the elusive promise of freedom, opportunity and justice for all is not (and probably never was), the anticipated dreamscape scenario seen when most of us close our eyes.  We have tip-toed around our innate bigotry for two plus centuries, smiling snidely in public while privately nurturing our differences, arriving today, fully exposed with our hatred for one another on our sleeves.  Most of us have taken sides, (indecision, and jumping from one team to another, is still taking sides), in an atmosphere where corporations and religions, (also corporations), and political affiliations openly promote a mandate wherein success is measured by the dominance or, (in a perfect world), destruction of all others.  I’m just sickened by the mean spiritedness of it all.  I wish “they’d” all die!

Michael Connelly has instilled the clever Harry Bosch with a simple code – ‘everyone counts, or no one counts’…yeah.