A familiar story, and expected commentary from the howling masses. I was listening to Tony Kornheiser ranting about sportswriting and never receiving a Pulitzer, and he mentioned how his former editor Gene Weingarten received one for his story about parents who in a moment of terrible forgetfulness, left their children to die in hot, parked cars. It is should be REQUIRED reading for anybody who thinks about commenting on such stories.
What is remarkable is the self-delusion, not from the parents who left their kids in the car - but from the people commenting. It's related to something that I often think about - had I grown up in Nazi Germany, would I have protested and resisted? Or would I have participated fully in National Socialism? I don't serious know. In the last days of the Third Reich, when the Soviet army closed in on Berlin, the most fanatical defenders of the city were the teenaged child-soldiers of the Hitler Youth. What chance did they have? What were they really thinking? Could we call it brainwashing or something more complicated?
We all think we can control our lives. We don't want to think about the randomness of life. Whole religions have been constructed to make sense of the randomness of life. How can evil people succeed and rewarded? How can bad things happen to good people? No problem - judgement will come after death. But what if there is no judgement? How do we make sense of this?
We can't. There is no sense or order to it.