Peace? Not on the Web, on TV, or the news? How about . . . in your heart?

And so, peace.

You won't find it on the streets, where criminal illegal aliens -- too many of them murderers, rapists, human traffickers, drug cartel operatives -- hide behind hordes of victimized innocents, families seeking better lives, driven by desperation and the winks and lure of corrupt American business and politics to skirt immigration law, as all are belatedly being rounded up.

Blame can go back generations, greed crosses political and corporate lines and national borders. But the faces of victims are still haunting, and this gallery is seemingly endless. Justice is not only not balanced, but it is messy, and painful, beyond understanding.

Past political failures in our nation's capital, while primarily of one party and presidents who spent their terms putting off the inevitable push back on radical islamic apocalyptic visions of nuclear explosions over Israel, have been met with what could be the beginning of a planetary end game -- our nation's attempt this weekend to destroy Iran's nuclear arms dreams.

We pray, hope, wonder if the end game will be met with Iran folding its mushroom aces. . . or if the horror has just begun.

"For when they shall say, 'Peace and safety,' then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child . . .,'" is a verse (1 Thessalonians 5:3 KJV) I recall from my childhood Bible study. (End Times verses, often out of context, were a big thing in Pentecostal Fundamentalist 'The End is Near' theology).

Well, we'll see. Fear makes headlines better than hope, so in a way, it makes sense it only took minutes for a particular news organization to report rumors that maybe Russia would give nuclear warheads to Iran! 

And of course, they also reported that with the Biden administration having let in millions of unvetted illegal immigrants -- thousands believed to be on terrorist lists -- we can expect "sleeper cell" attacks.

Last bit might be more likely, I don't know. Hope neither is, but we have had more than a few of those so-called "lone wolf" attacks over the past weeks, months, and years.

So, back to that peace thing.

Not on TV. Not on the radio. Not during rush hour on "road rage" plagued freeways. Locally, not in our neighborhood parks during community celebrations -- we've had a number of deadly gang-related shootings here in Utah, and during a "peaceful protest" downtown in Salt Lake City.

Peace, then in your heart? 

Tougher and tougher to find.

But still possible.

A walk along a forest trail, hand-in-hand with your loved one. The water cascades from streams nearby, bees float amid flowers purple, gold, orange, gold, silky white, emerald, and nestled in wreaths of green. The air is filled with perfume of pollen and pine; sunlight and shadow dance thrown tree limbs and rock.

Or, a candle is lit, bee's wax slowly descending its shaft as wisps of incense rise in a smoky circuit to saintly icons on the wall. Your prayers, whispered at first, are swallowed in silence echoed in your mind, and eternity.

Peace, and your focus finds the stars.

The times we live in: Where even the cops say arm yourself for that walk to work

Our police chief in Salt Lake City of late has been boasting about how crime is down in the city's downtown core, i.e., the environs of the homeless shelters and free clinics.

Or, perhaps it is simply that people who used to report crimes -- folks you a couple years ago moved into new condos erected as the formerly depressed area of rail yards was "gentrified," got tired of the futility of calling in drug deals, bum fights, drunks urinating and defecating on the sidewalks, etc.

I work in the middle of the worst of this area. Every morning before dark, I ride the train downtown and get off one block from the shelters and the scene of weekly stabbings and strong-arm robberies committed by that criminal element that thrives within any large homeless community.

Like wraiths, there are always a couple of shadowy forms peering out from the parking lots, alleys and not-yet-open business entry ways.

During the daylight hours, the danger is likely less, but you cannot walk half a block without being accosted by beggars with stories of woe, and the hungry, wan look of meth or crack addicts in bloodshot eyes.

Twice, by different police officers I've dealt with as a breaking news reporter, I've been strongly advised to get a concealed/carry permit and carry a locked and loaded firearm.

Having once been confronted in the predawn dark by a couple street men, one circling behind me while the other attempted to cut me off from the front, I took the advice.

On the cited occasion, I was somewhat younger and lucky enough to find a piece of scrap rebar in a vacant lot that convinced the two to walk away.

Now, a last resort would be a legally obtained and licensed handgun. I pray I never have to pull it out, let alone fire it in a desperate, last ditch defense of myself, my family or an innocent stranger.

But this is the world we live in, and as my police acquaintances told me, going unprotected into such areas as where I work, and at the time of day I work, is to go naked into a den of hyenas.

So, today was another morning in the Zoo, the Asylum, or some circle of Hades, whatever you call these occasionally very mean streets. The shadowy forms flitted into and out of the dim street lamp lights, and away.

On the train platform where I daily get off to walk the couple blocks to the office, someone had abandoned a shelter blanket in one place, and a pair of underwear a few feet away. On other days, I've walked by huddled forms, their ragged faces brielfy lit by the glow of their crack pipes.

And, in front of the Tribune's main entrance was an abandoned syringe, the needle gone. I carefully picked up the syringe tube and tossed it in the garbage.

After all, little kids walk that sidewalk later in the day on the way to a nearby children's museum and school children by the busloads visit the planetarium across the street. 

Still, it seems an almost futile effort, like trying to dig through a mountain of sludge with a teaspoon.

The economy, and lack of jobs -- at least ones that can support a family or pay a mortgage; drug addiction; mental illness ignored by underfunding of needed treatment programs; and the human predators who thrive within a desperate, often hopeless community . . . all are contributors to the sickness.

All those things, and at the heart of it all, of our existence as human beings, the hopelessness of spirits broken by life, and however to define it, yes, sin.

And so, here's the bitter irony. On one hand, I am a Christian who gives tithes and offerings toward various outreach programs to the homeless and others suffering on the fringe of society.
And on the other hand, I live in a world where just going to my job means facing the possibility of a life-threatening encounter -- and, in the most extreme of circumstances, one where it becomes -- as it has for others, too often -- a decision to take a life to keep your own.

Stay OUT of Syria; stop ignoring the crises in our own backyard

Obama and a yet another war?

 I'm still trying to figure out how, strictly speaking, Syria's civil war -- between a brutal dictator on one hand, and al-Qaida led rebels on the other -- is a matter of our national security. 

It's like trying to pick which devil to back based on which has the shorter horns. In this case, it smacks of a lost, confused "leadership" trying to restore its "rep" by throwing around its military might, as if that will somehow restore its lost morality.

I'd like to see us get out of Afghanistan sooner than later, NOT get into Syria at all, and pay more attention to crime, employment and health issues in our own hemisphere. 

If we're looking to pour blood, treasure and compassion into a "cause," we have only to look at our inner cities, and our neighbors to the south.

We need to keep our treaty obligations to Israel, the only true democratic republic in the Middle East. We do NOT need to be the world's policeman and nanny, getting involved in sectarian civil wars, or trying to impose our form of government on societies with no history of, or affinity for this Western concept.

Humanitarian aid? Absolutely. Food. Medicine. Help with developing new markets.

But when will we learn that when it comes to the Middle East, removing one monster only makes room for another?