The Most Unsettling Question

Jim Litke asks and attempts to answer what I think is the underlying question that's most disturbing about this entire experience, the one that we just can't shake. Can this actually be happening in America? I really shouldn't excerpt it, because it should be read of a piece, but maybe this will get you to click.

Usually, we shudder, change the channel or turn the page, awaiting better news. But there is something too compelling about these pictures. The distance between us and the people in them has been narrowed, rendered uncomfortably close, and not just for those who are family, friends or neighbors. We recognize them. We all see people like them.

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Much harder to measure is the cost of all those searing images burned into the national conscience, and what they've done to the sense of security that was our last refuge when disasters wreaked havoc, and then, unnecessary suffering, in distant lands--the certainty that it couldn't happen here.

Now we know better.