Unfathomable: The sane can't know the insane, yet we repeat behavior, too

You accept, when serving in the military, the possibility that someone close to you might die.

In law enforcement, we're told, you begin each shift with the primary focus that you and the officers around you each make it home that day or night.

Even in journalism we accept that we are at times going to have a front row seat to a certain level of carnage and, in rare instances -- although not rare enough -- reporters do put themselves in the line of fire and die doing what they signed up to do.

This is none of those things.

This, again, is a school filled with children, teenagers, who despite their budding maturity, people our age still look upon as "babies."

Kids, doing what they were free to do and where they were expected to be, who yet again, fall victim to the perversions of a single mind.

One person made a decision to irreparably damage families, extended families, friends and neighbors of those he captured in his sights and who fell when he pulled the trigger.

As has happened so many times in the past, the comments come in waves and then in droves -- "Our thoughts and prayers are with..." "...his name sounds like an immigrant's..." "...he was obviously a Muslim..." "...jihadist..." "...this is the fault of the NRA..." "...lack of gun control...," "...it didn't take the liberal media long to...".

We are spectators once again, forced to look upon the face of pure evil which we neither willingly incite nor know how to prevent.

And so we lash out at each other.

We will light candles.

We'll hug our children tighter.

We'll take to Facebook and to Twitter to rail against strangers and friends alike who fail to see our points of view.

And then, as we have also done so many times before, we will grow weary of the talk.

We'll change the channel.

We'll turn the page.

We'll scroll farther down the feed and retire the outrage once again.

Until the next time.

Published in Editorials on February 14, 2018 10:16 PM