...what is the sound of one hand?

It's impossible to engage in civil discourse when only one side wants to speak with civility

The other side won't even acknowledge a problem.

Yet... for all of the outrage over innocents lost and injured, there is this:

...As President Barack Obama consoled the nation Wednesday with talk of "rain puddles in heaven," his agents were murdering four more people in his illegal war in Pakistan. The incongruity was excruciating; you could almost feel your neck snapping from the moral whiplash induced by the contrast between word and deed...

Only if you were paying attention, Chris.

...even this report was itself drenched in the mindset of righteous murder that lurked behind the treacly tropes that Obama was delivering to a rapturous crowd. You can see it in the language of the very first paragraph:

Suspected U.S. unmanned aircraft fired four missiles at a house in a militant-infested area of northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least four people, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

An "infested" area -- the language used for vermin, for insects, for filthy creatures fit only for extermination. These insects are what is being killed in the wilds of Pakistan: not human beings, not sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. Just strange, worthless little creepy-crawlies called "militants."

...So what are we told? That four "militants" were killed. Well, surely they had it coming, right, if they were militants? "Militant" means "insurgent" which means "terrorist" which means "big swarthy devil-worshipper coming to shtup your woman and eat your babies." We know what to do with these insects: you crush them.

But who said they were "militants"? Well, unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials, as indicated at the very beginning of the story. But just three paragraphs later, these same anonymous officials admit that "the identities and nationalities of those killed in Wednesday's strike were unknown."

In other words, the "officials" didn't know who was killed. They didn't know their names. They didn't know their affiliations, their activities, their beliefs, their intentions. They didn't know who they were. They didn't know where they were from. They didn't know anything about them. Yet we are told confidently, without contradiction or the slightest doubt, that they were "militants."

Yes, it's a sorry statement on 'Merika the Free Market. Bloody murder has a place in our culture. If Jared Loughner wasn't a dysfunctional paranoid schizophrenic, he could have a Company job killing all the innocents he could get his hands on. That is, if he could wait until his government told him it was okay.