Wow, that is so sad for your friend, Benjamin. I am not, nor have I *ever* been, anything remotely resembling a "liberal." Liberals buy the lies and tell themselves they're good people but they are .. well, I've either been right-wing as I was raised in an orange grove ... my grandfather actually was a "good cop," the Sheriff in our small town during WW2, and the foreman at the Sunkist packing house, and an honest decent man - or what I am now, which is a radical. These political labels are meaningless. Average Romans had no more choice of leader than today's Angelenos, nor did it really matter. Rome burned, but Rome is the Eternal City. Will LA be so? I don't know, part of me wants it to turn back to the Tar Pit era, which has been suggested by several writers in various alternate histories. I absolutely agree with your idea that physical well being and health is a measure of how well people live with and treat others. I've started to doubt a lot of history - and especially "political labels". God bless your friend, I've been through similar upheavals a total of seven times so I actually just wrote about that. Your friend needs resilience.