To the Editor:

    As if there weren’t enough growing anxiety over the prospect of a Romney presidency and Conservative economics on steroids, the “Arm the People” crowd wants our public (and private) places filled with loaded guns “to prevent gun violence”.  So much for finding escape and sanctuary in bars and darkened theaters.  Best to stay home and watch retro, campy, BAM!  POW!  SOCK EM IN THE JAW! Adam West as Batman reruns.

    Sorry for the sarcasm in response to tragedy but it drives me crazy that, in the same way that some continue to deny our role in global warming, as a society we continue to ignore the desensitization implicit in a consumer economy that regards human lives as but another commodity to be used and exploited.  How much difference is there in the celebration of those cheering the bomb blasts of “Shock and Awe” at the beginning of the Iraq war and the elation a deranged mind feels in opening fire in a crowded theater?  Is there more tragedy in Aurora than in the “collateral damage” of a wedding party being mistaken for a terrorist meeting in Afghanistan?  Who among us has a psyche not in some way damaged and scarred?

    A hard truth is that we have lost sense of the fragility and interconnectedness and responsibility of being alive and part of a world that is in itself a living organism.  The hard question is:  will we recover these in time to save us from ourselves?

RP