Many activists find meaning in being busy tilting at windmills

Pratt on TexasDon Quixote de la Mancha is a character as alive in imagination today as in 1605 and 1615 when Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra published the two volume novel.

The character, who assumes the name Don Quixote, reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world. And today we’ve still people who, for a plethora of reasons, choose tilting at windmills as their mission.

The phrase “tilting at windmills” is used to describe pseudo-knight Quixote’s using of his spear, or lance, to engage in attacking imaginary enemies and comes from an iconic scene in the book.

The latest sad, and I mean truly sad, case comes out of Graham were the mother of the young man who was stabbed to death in a wild attack upon several people at UT-Austin is now doing media interviews in an effort to give us knife-control.

It is in the busy nature of tilting at yet more windmills that many activists find meaning and fulfillment.

She wants the bill Rep. Frullo passed ending all the silly knife rules we had, repealed because she seems to think such would make a difference. Never mind that someone who commits murder is not likely to care that they are breaking a knife law; never mind that the murder of her son took place with the old knife restrictions in-place, and; never mind that even under the new law the huge knife used to kill her son, Harrison Brown, is still illegal on the UT campus.

Like many saturated with grief, the idea that we should just “do something” seems to trump reason. It is in the busy nature of tilting at yet more windmills that many activists find meaning and fulfillment.

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