Random Acts and Fraudulent Compassions

"The less at stake, the greater the grieving."

Hitchens is so insightfully snarky, such an equal-opportunity offender, beholden to no ideology - that I'm starting to think that he's next to get the Imus workover.

This week he eviscerates the false sentimentalism on display following the shootings at Virginia tech as a media-manufactured occasion whereby people get to demonstrate compassion towards one another. He's not really talking about actually feeling bad for the families or keeping them in our prayers. It's quite a different phenomenon that troubles Hitch.

He's talking about the ostentatious pronouncements, ceremonies and mawkish effusions of public officials - the dutiful lowering of the flag. His take is that these are undertaken with such vigor because it's a free pass at virtue, since there was nothing larger at stake. No clash of civilizations, not martyr for a cause, no justification or elaborate victimology that would cause an argument. Bland "keep them in our thoughts" pablum is a way to show you care, and earn karma points.

And the secondary implication is that we are doomed - we simply lack the spine - if something truly serious comes our way in the form of national danger. This is a sobering thought, and one with which I support a little more keenly. Hitchen's observations about bogus sentimentalism is probably correct too, but it's a harsh critique. People "care", Chris - how can you complain?

Something grimmer and more deadly, something which endangers us - boy, we better hope those kinds of threats were left behind last century - and that the event six years ago was anomalous blip. Better hope and hope harder - cause we just couldn't take it.