Oh, the Humanity.

We live now in a country where the murder of nearly three-score people and the wounding of more than 500 more hardly interrupts our work-day.

We continue with our tasks, make our meetings, do little more than pass a remark to our co-workers. It’s as ordinary, it seems, this carnage as a fire drill or asking what’s for lunch or how was your weekend.

When the shootings at Virginia Tech happened in April of 2007, it seemed seminal, and extraordinary. Now, such shootings seem to come around as often as a sale at Raymour & Flanagan. They are so frequent they have become unremarkable. 

The banality of evil. 

Now, we have developed our checklist. When we hear of one we survey the information to uncover, was the shooter a “muslim,” did black kill white or white kill black? ie was this a “terrorist” attack? No? Then we shake our collective heads and go to our meetings like nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

80 years ago when the Hindenburg exploded on landing, it shocked a nation. Chances are you can recall images from the scene, and maybe the cries of the radio announcer saying, “Oh, the humanity.”

That disaster, so vivid and etched saw the deaths of (just) 35 people—24 more died in Las Vegas, and many more were injured. But the Hindenburg’s carnage seemed rare, horrible, vivid. It seared our memories.

This death quickly vaporized. Tom Petty. The latest Trumpian bullshit. By Thursday we will be watching football again.

And life.

And death.

Will go on.

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