Still sad, still thinking

About the Fort Hood killings.

I have known people who were (formerly) stationed there. I know how bases often become a pretty tight community for people who live there.

I think that's maybe the theme of the 20th-21st centuries: a group of people build a community that is working, that is doing good, and then someone comes in and tries to destroy it. (Actually, maybe this is the theme of civilized life; I seem to remember some instances, not quite the same, from the New Testament.)

I don't know why. If you pressed me, I'd kind of shrug and shake my head and go, "Evil?" Because I don't know. I'm the kind of person, who, if I get really angry with someone (and that is VERY rare, at that), my inclination is to go find that person, sit down with them, and try to explain why I am angry and see if I can fix things. Or, in the few instances where I felt my life was trashed and I had just failed at everything, my plans were to pick up, give away most of my stuff, buy a cheap car and drive as far as I could, find a new town, and get a job waiting tables or something for a while. Just disappear and try to make a new life. I never actually did it - on wiser reflection I figured out an alternate plan that didn't involve running away - but literally, that was my "nuclear option" - running off and resettling somewhere else and trying to make a new life.

I can't understand wanting to kill other people. But I suppose that's why 99.9% of us don't.

Look, I don't know why this happened, if there was something (other than simple evil) that made the guy do it. It's probably irresponsible to even speculate at this point.

My main inclination at this point is to say "there's evil in the world, and sometimes people get tempted to it." May we all be able to recognize evil when it comes to us, and resist its temptation.

My heart goes out to the families who lost loved ones. And to the injured. And to all the folks whose sense of community has been destroyed, whose trust has been shattered. I hope they can heal.

I wish we never had to hear these kinds of stories. It made me think of Virginia Tech all over again.