Is Everything Else Trivial in the Aftermath of this Tragedy?

Some times when a tragedy strikes and when everything on the news relates to terrible details of heinous crimes, it feels like a violation to be writing about other topics…as if anything else at this moment is trivial and off point.  When I was in Jamaica over the past five days, of course the televisions there were tuned to the stations detailing the news, and it was as hard to avoid there as it is here.

Today on the Today show, the demon’s face was shown, again and again, and for this I was sad.  There can  be no more attention paid to the details of this horrible person, who not only felt it necessary to kill his mother but carried it over to children he didn’t and to teachers he’d never met.  These people are out there, and I hate thinking about another mentally ill young man reading all of these accounts and thinking it might be his turn next to do something so wicked.

When the Texas church that’s famous for picketing the funerals of Afghanistan war heroes put out a statement on Twitter that they are planning to picket the school or the church where memorials would be held, again, I felt that by naming them I am giving them what they want.  I cringe some times when I think that each of us on Facebook, on Twitter or on our blogs have a chance to give these terrible people more fame.

What is the cause of all of this? Is it the fact that every popular movie includes people waving around guns?  That the biggest stars of films carry even bigger guns, or that popular video games allow people to massacre others on screen?  I  read a gun owner advocate today saying that the blood of the children is on the hands of those who support gun control, because the teachers weren’t armed, and thus they didnt’ have  a chance to take out the shooter.  Really?

Things are crazy and now that a massacre has happened right down the road from us, what else can happen?