Nice at the French embassy in D.C.

It is all becoming common place: an atrocity happens, in a place near or far. People are alternatively shocked, outraged, sad or angry. The media goes into a frenzy of activity and analyses by talking heads of all persuasions. We ring our hands, change our FB profile picture, illuminate monuments in appropriate colors, utter platitudes (much as I'm doing right now) and overuse the word 'prayer' -- at least on this side of the Atlantic, as if there were a God and she gave a damn.  

And then we move on. No action, no plan (and I'm not talking about delivering a bigger payload of bombs). We seek comfort in insularity: build walls, close borders, toss people out or keep them out in the first place, turn against each other. Is anyone looking at possible root causes? A bunch of disaffected young men (overwhelmingly) without a stake in their own future and therefore with nothing to lose or conversely nothing to invest in. How would we begin to address that?

What a f...g mess. Really.