Mitch Darling: The Summer of ’16 (And it isn’t going well)

♫Summertime, and the living is easy.♬

So goes the song. It’s a time to relax at a beach, hike in the mountains, take in a few ballgames, or just kick back generally with family and friends. The practice of law slows down a bit, as lawyers, judges, witnesses taking vacations makes the scheduling of depositions and trials a “problem.”

And it’s the time of year for news organizations to hunt down “summer stories,” that are usually light, and frivolous, or are strictly local but the national news picks them up and runs with them. A story like Pokemon Go taking off like a bat out of hell, for instance, is classic summer fodder. To be followed by people getting hurt or killed due to aggravated acts of stupidity as they turn a blind eye to their surroundings and chase digital fantasies.

But not this summer.

Yesterday, a bloody coup attempt in NATO ally Turkey.

Just one day after a horrific terror attack in Nice, France.

Which had followed in short order the killing of five Dallas cops.

Which had followed in short order the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

This is all interspersed with the continuing horrors of a civil war in Syria, bombings in Iraq and elsewhere that our news organizations pay scant attention to in relation to the significance of the damage done.

And, of course, a presidential campaign with one candidate doing all that he can to be racially divisive.

It makes it tough to write about personal injury law. I’ve wanted to, for sure, but each time I sit down at the keyboard I get sidetracked by the latest misery and lose my inspiration.

In my mind, for instance, I had a piece written in my head about the Tesla car on auto pilot that slammed into a left turning truck. Everyone wrote about the car, with few mentioning that the truck was making a left without the coast being clear.

The summer of ’16 is not shaping up well, my friends. Whether or not this goes down in history as a momentous time or not isn’t something I’m smart enough to say, but at the moment it sure doesn’t look good. No one will ever brand this the Summer of Love.

I could issue a little prayer that things get better, but such hopefulness will, in all likelihood, simply leave me disappointed. Another option is to simply disconnect from the digital world, under the ignorance is bliss philosophy, but that will not achieve anything either.

So if the blog is quiet for awhile, you’ll know why. It’s because I’m watching the news.