The surprising thing about the shooting in Las Vegas is not that it occurred, but that such outrages do not occur far more frequently. Could anyone lead an active, half-way observant life in the U.S. without realizing how many crazies there are out there? Get out on the road, go to a football game, go to a Trump rally, go to a white supremacist or survivalist gathering, visit a  local gunshow, and you will see crazies “as thick as hasty pudding.” I’m not talking about your foam-at-the-mouth, hatchet-swinging crazies. I’m talking about your road-ragers and your internet trolls, about the crowd that wants to make the USA all white and all Christian again, about the willfully ignorant and subrational, about the multitudes that blame their own errors and deficiencies on the imagined malice of others. And firearms circulate freely in this this mental institution of a nation in incalculable numbers. We are addicted to firearms, and crave more guns and bigger guns, really ugly ones! Go to a gun show, go to a gun shop. You will not find graceful fowling pieces, single-shot target rifles, or weapons suited to the defense of house and home. You will find military grade firearms whose only real purpose is slaughter, although, thank goodness, they are more often used only to enhance b-movie inspired masturbatory fantasies. No, Vegas should be no surprise.

And yet, events like that in Vegas, thanks to our astounding capacity for denial, afford us days of 24-hour coverage of shock and surprise, hand-wringing, thrilling emotional catharsis, and political posturing, none of which ever does anything about the national maladies that create this atmosphere so conducive to mass shootings.

America has grown pathetically soft. At the time of 9-11, when we were treated to a nation-wide orgy of grief, terror, and mindless rage, I was studying at an institute that hosted a number of Israeli scholars. These Israelis offered America their condolences, up to a point. But they stopped when they saw us refuse to get over it and get on with responsible living. They observed that if Israelis went into such a paroxysm after every terrorist attack, the community and state would collapse altogether.

Whether the shooting in Las Vegas was “an act of pure evil,” or an act of mixed evil, or an exercise in self-indulgent and cowardly lunacy, we had better get past the emotional posturing and honestly confront our national sickness, hoping to prepare for future generations a more honest and rational community.