Another shooting?

Despite your latest faults — like the war in Iraq — many liberal minded people around the world still look up to you. For them, you are the paragon of democracy, freedom and civil rationalism. Many emulate your economic model, even if with some local adjustments; others hope to establish an enlightened regime like yours in their home countries. And some harbor a long-cherished wish to land one day on the shores of California, New England or Florida — to never step off.

Are all these people just being naive and credulous?

You claim moral superiority to such nations as China, where admittedly civil rights have been and are still being violated. But it seems that your own leniency has only led to an anti-social rampage and a gross devaluation of human life. And the right to live, allow me to remind you, is the most fundamental of them all.

The most unsettling fact about these shootings are the reasons, that is, the lack of any. Someone who feels inadequate, or unpopular, or somehow resentful, goes home, takes a gun, loads it, returns to the place where the offence took place, and starts shooting everybody. Sometimes randomly, sometimes not — it doesn’t matter — the chain of events contains so many irrational links, another one won’t change a thing. Finally, the shooter kills himself; they almost always do.

It’s as if they are afraid to face the consequences. What would they tell their interrogators? “I was angry?” “They called me names?” “They put some salt in my coffee?” I think the questions would be more difficult to deal with than a lifetime in jail. I think they know they would continue asking themselves these questions for the rest of their lives — they cannot bear the thought of it, and dispatch themselves in what appears like a cowardly solution.

So What is happening to you, America?

Are you still the bastion of rationality so many people know you for? Or have the weeds grown through the walls, rendering them shaky, unstable and unreliable?