When I retired from the military, my primary goal in life was to ride off into the sunset in an 18-wheeler and, as the saying goes, “study war no more.” It was a sentiment perhaps best encapsulated in a painting by the brilliant artist, Patrick Reynolds, wherein an angelic figure is seen with his sword on the ground as he kneels to tenderly embrace a small lamb.

Alas, the last few years in Memphis have illustrated, as surely as any deployment to some carnage-infested corner of the Middle East, that life does not always imitate art. Indeed, the value of human life here is on par with that of any number of miserable hellholes where people yell that God is great just before blowing themselves and others to pieces.

Consider that Memphis has seen more than 30 highway shootings in 2019 alone, as hot-headed jackasses shoot at motorists who have the misfortune of sharing a stretch of interstate with these raging imbeciles who scream down the highway at well over 100 mph while swerving through traffic, endangering themselves and everyone else. Add to that the daily shootings and killings that bestrew the Memphis landscape, crossing all socio-economic lines and districts, claiming the lives of the affluent and the downtrodden, public officials and innocent children alike, and you have third world anarchy, mayhem, and death.