Klowns in my Koffee

I was just watching the end of one of my favorite "coming of age" movies. It wasn't "Dirty Dancing" or any of those first love/magical summer movies but "A Few Good Men." The main character moves from merely phoning in his life to finding his true self and calling. The climactic scene where Jack Nicholson as Colonel Jessup is taken down is so gripping that it could be considered a guilty pleasure in itself.

One reason that it works so well is that Jessup may be right about the slippery slope we encounter when we purposely overlook the ethical cost of maintaining the privileges of our society. How wide is our individual span of responsibility? How far do you have to go to not be complicit? I want to eat more vegetables so I don't think about the children of migrant workers picking them and not being able to go to school. We are strong trade partners with China and tsk-tsk their appalling human rights practices in the belief that the gradual introduction of democracy and exposure to Western ideals will improve the situation in time. Maybe we can't handle the truth after all.