The nation, and Colorado, have barely had time to catch their collective breath after last month’s massacre in an Aurora theater while yet another mass killing takes place in a Wisconsin Sikh temple.
Yet another “killing spree” — a perverse media catchphrase if ever there was one — and yet more of the grim rituals that inevitably follow: The usually fruitless exploration of the “why” question, the search for clues from the murky minds and backgrounds of the murderers, the telling of heroic and tragic accounts, the heartbreaking memorials.
The litany is already a long one, beginning with Columbine and passing through Virginia, Arizona, Norway, Aurora and far too many others.
Once again, we are stunned, shocked, saddened, sidelined, yet it seems that with each successive mass killing we grow a little more inured, just a tiny bit more accustomed to such atrocities.
It is inherently human to grow accustomed to things, even horrible things, perhaps as an emotional cushion against the horror — a defensive coping mechanism that allows us to continue living and hoping for better times.
Mass killings are indeed the deadly scourge of our times, much as gangland violence was characteristic of the 1920s and 1930s and assassinations of the 1960s. Such phenomena spread like contagious disease.
The worms — whether of madness or of evil — that lurk within these killers’ minds are derivative of each other. They are copy cats, inspired and encouraged by the bloody deeds of those who went before.
Like another persistent human scourge — serial killers — they seem to strive to outdo one another.
Sometimes no warning signs are exhibited that might have prevented such killings. Other times, the signs that are displayed are underestimated or ignored, as might have been the case with the Aurora killer and the subsequent murderer of Sikhs in Wisconsin.
Whether motivated by racist or religious hatred, by political extremism, by psychological delusion or simply by a desire to kill, these mass killers are very hard to stop.
We might arm ourselves to the teeth, or fortify ourselves within an Orwellian state, but even then we wouldn’t have any ironclad guarantees. Even then, we would have no real choice but to acknowledge our vulnerability to these atrocities.
The best we can hope for, it seems, is that the current disease, like those that came before it, will eventually run its course; that the worm that causes these people to pull their triggers will one day die.
Pray that it be soon.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
