Child's Play

For those not clear on why it's stupid to suspend kids for playing "cops and robbers" and pretending their hands are guns:

1. Are you going to suspend kids for playing with toy cars when they don't have valid drivers' licences?  
2. Even Obama does not want to take guns away from police.  On the contrary, the trend is for police to complain that they are outgunned because they lack fully automatic weapons (which are great at mowing down a crowd of bystanders, but not so hot if you're trying to limit casualties in a civilian environment).
3. It is a very serious offense -- a canonical crime that can lead to an iterdict (similar to an excommunication) -- to simulate the Mass.  This is about a deliberate sacrilege by adults, though.  It has nothing to do with kids playing Mass. That's because the Church has been around for two thousand years and knows the difference between play and reality.

I actually feel bad about even writing about such nonsense.  Isn't this obvious to everyone?  Yes, it must surely be. Why then do we have so many zero-tolerance rules?

I think it's because we are the laziest generation of humans to populate this country, if not to walk the earth.  That's what zero-tolerance means:  We are too lazy to distinguish serious from trivial.  It's what a flat, across-the-board cut means:  We are too lazy to prioritize.  It's what "I made a hard decision" means:  "I was too lazy to find the right answer."