BRIEF THOUGHTS ON THE LATEST NEWS

It's obvious that the Virginia Tech shooting will be the big news story this week, and perhaps throughout the rest of the month. The tragedy goes without saying. It's a horrible, horrible story.

But I'm also disturbed because I know we're gonna get all manner of hand-wringing and quasi-concerned punditry from all sides for the next few weeks: pro-gun, anti-gun, anti-immigration (because early reports seem to indicate that the gunman was a Chinese man, in America on a student VISA; if I'm wrong, I apologize. But that's what I've read), pro-immigration, comparisons to terrorism, arguments that it has nothing to do with terror, analogies to Iraq, etc.

It's gonna make me sick.

I'm not naive. I know that's how it goes, and while everyone surely will be saddened and/or shocked by the event, the entire population doesn't owe anything to the grieving families and friends. Nevertheless, it'll be difficult to see people draw all sorts of attenuated links from this random & senseless event to whatever cause or issue means something to them.

Terrible things happen because there are terrible people in the world. There isn't much more of a lesson we can draw. As humans, we want to know "why?" But there's really no answer.