Deanna,

One of the things I noticed from the coverage of this tragedy is that Tuscon has its act together! AZ has been under a ton of political pressure lately from both inside and outside forces. It was a lightning rod waiting to be struck by everyone with an axe to grind. The worst of punditry and politicking was inevitible when the next major news event occurred.

But the emergency response network (bystanders, first responders, hospital, and law enforcement) performed beautifully. Tucson really does have a small town social fabric in spite of its size and complexity. Most of these folks responding to this crisis had just lost friends and neighbors in an unexpected horror. They rose to the challenge. Bravo! Right people, right place, right time, doing the right things. That's very rare in America nowadays!

Politicos always try to make hay while the sun is shining. They will dance on graves before the funeral is over. "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him," proclaimed Mark Antony to the Roman mob. They are shameless. They exist in all cultures and always have. Modern technology has given them a massive platform and unprecedented access to our lives. It was the President's recently-departed Chief of Staff who once advised, "Never let a crisis go to waste."

I think it was fairly obvious to most observers that it was the left side of American politics that immediately began using the shootings to attack their opponents, and that some of the conservatives they targeted were foolish enough to respond in kind. People see these sorts of things and they remember the general theme of who was naughty and who was nice. We'll see how all of that plays out in time. The gun-grabbers are getting nowhere on this one. The folks who want to lock up and/or medicate by force everyone whom they think acts a little "weird" are the dangerous ones right now! They may get some traction.

The so-called "intellectuals" in America have a very bizarre guilt complex. They seem to believe that any time something bad happens in the world it is somehow "our" fault, "we" should have prevented it, and "we" have to make some change in the way we live so that "something like this never happens again." They could use a healthy dose of "stuff happens." It's an amazing sort of arrogance that leads to such an over-developed sense social responsibility. And this over-developed sense of social responsibility necessitates a diminished sense of personal-responsibility, and the by-product is the erosion of liberty. They react this way to natural disasters resulting from earthquakes and weather! If they think "we" should be able to prevent that sort of stuff, they are certainly going to think we should be able to preempt any sort of negative human behavior. To think that way about either is extremely naive and arrogant. They could use a good dose of Judeo-Christian cosmology on that issue! Even the musician Bob Seger understands. He wrote the lyrics in the song Night Moves, when speaking of the romantic relationships between men and women, "Heaven opens up the door where angels fear to tread." And in the Book of Job God gave a pretty good lesson on man's capacities when he asked Job if he knew where the deer all laid down to give birth, if he could trace all of the lightning bolts across the sky, etc. He told Job that when he could do even ONE of these things that he would then have the right to challenge God's reasoning and/or motives. Whether or not we believe in the god of the Holy Bible, we could all do well to remember our place. Perhaps a good road trip to the Grand Canyon would help all of these folks. As Clint Eastwood said, "A man's gotta know his limitations."

The folks forming contemporary American thought are a bunch of yahoos. They've forgotten the basics and have their heads in the clouds. So they can't see straight. In the Book of Romans, Paul described such a scenario when he said, "And professing themselves wise they became fools."

Unfortunately, any time something like this happens, the fools crawl out of the woodwork to prove just how foolishly they can behave.