I read the news today. Oh boy.

*

Whenever I read a story like this I wonder if assassination has become a sensational new American trend in the 21st century or if it's always been this popular. I hear myself and others rationalizing that maybe it's always been this bad but largely hidden from view before most people had access to the Internet. I've caught myself almost becoming blasé with every new report of a workplace shooting, a mini campus massacre, or personal assassination orchestrated by an aggrieved, insane individual. But this story stuck out to me, as did the last sentence in it:

The shooting occurred three days after a 32-year-old man with a history of mental illness opened fire in a middle school parking lot in Colorado, wounding two students. 

The latter shooting was perpetrated Tuesday in Littleton, Colorado, and surprisingly didn't seem to get overly lurid national news attention. That's good, but also made it easy to miss what with all the news about the Winter Olympics and Tiger Woods losing his "Gatorade" endorsement.

It shouldn't be difficult to find real statistics indicating that this is in fact a postmodern development rather than a visibility increase with respect to the American norm for murderous behavior. I don't feel like doing the research, and believe that my gut reaction is sufficient evidence for my own purposes.

Everyone can speculate about the compound causes so I will, too. America's collective nonchalance about the entertainment value of bloody violence is certainly one driver --- how could it not be when children are raised to think teenage splatter movies are funny? The coincident rise in individual social isolation and mental illness also are at the foundation. Now, the emergence of a hideously antisocial postmodern conservative Christian worldview that is neither conservative nor Christian may be completely unrelated, but it seems to me that it isn't. After all, postmodern America is a place where the idea of government-inflicted torture inspires "debate" and "ethical quandaries" instead of universal moral outrage.

Editor's note: even though the author is sermonizing above, it does not constitute your Friday Evening Prayer Meeting. You can find that right here.