When a town of nobodies dies, nobody dies

Morgan Lewis is dead. He was shot in back of the neck. Who cares? He wasn't anybody important. He was a nobody.

Morgan Lewis taught young people. He taught college students and high school kids. They wonder why their teacher was killed outside his office building door. Why should we care what they think? Our lives go on. Unless we're nobodies.

We teach young people. We teach them that Morgan Lewis was a nobody . We teach them that they are nobodies. That's all they need to know.

A death used to be a community event. It meant that somebody was no longer with us. It meant a loss. Death was news. Death happened to somebodies. Somebodies have relatives. Relatives are an essential part of identity. Newspapers used to report deaths and the identities of those who died. Morgan Lewis had no identity. He wasn't important. He was a nobody.

Nobody dies when a nobody dies.

This used to be America. Everybody was a somebody. It put people over the government. Government answered to them. Then government decreed that its subjects were nobodies. The government answers to nobody.

Aberdeen, South Dakota, is dying. Life leaves it in the form of young people graduating from high school and college and moving on and nobodies dying. Why should they care when a nobody dies?

When a town of nobodies dies, nobody dies.

Small creatures scurrying

You look like a chipmunk living in fear that some superior force will swoop down and snatch you up in its talons. But you are a professor, aren't you? You scurry from student to student and glance furtively around at other professors walking by. Have you ever gone to the rat lab over in the pyschology department and seen those poor creatures cower, and then join others in attacking another that has been weakened?

Are you looking for a weak one? But you scurried into your burrow before I could tell.