Tom McLaughlin

Serendipity watch: After last week’s column on the pending abolition of Virginia’s death penalty, The Wason Center For Civic Leadership (at Christopher Newport University) conducted a survey this week on public attitudes toward crime and punishment.

Let’s spin the wheel and see where it lands:

There are two types of people in the world: those who lie and those who are lied to. To which group do you belong?

As we learn more about the insurrectionist violence at the U.S. Capitol last week — a historical turning point that ought to be viewed as every bit as shocking as 9/11 — the scarier and more disturbing the episode becomes.

It’s a little early in the year to be thinking about major subplots of 2021, but surely one is whether the festering insanity of the Trump years will give way to the competent assurance we are all hoping for out of our new president. Wait — you haven’t gotten the memo on President-elect Biden? Funny that.

If we’re all going to be honest with ourselves, there’s no denying the sadness in leafing through the pages of this newspaper and seeing photos of everyone wearing masks over their faces.

Let’s keep this simple, and let’s keep people safe: Thanksgiving is upon us, and painful as the thought may be, it can’t be a holiday the same as any other.