After the first-graders were slaughtered, after the Congresswoman was shot in her forehead at

[gratuitous]

32. Our national religion is the High Church of Redemptive Violence

It's how we settle our differences, and if some violence didn't decide an issue, the answer is more violence. We're so steeped in violence we don't recognize its pervasiveness shot through (you should pardon the expression) our culture.

The 9/11 attacks, for example. Some of us pulled together, but our national response was to invade Afghanistan, and later Iraq. We still haven't done a reckoning of why the terrorists struck at the heart of our financial industry and the headquarters of our war machine. I submit they weren't random targets.

If anything in the last 20 years, we've redoubled our greed and violence and caused a lot more misery all around the world while piously proclaiming our own good-heartedness while creating more poverty and death, and making our terrorist enemies all the more attractive to people with a legitimate gripe against our national policies.