We do maintain a Facebook account, connected to our real-world identity. Recently, it has provided me some amusement in the form of interacting with the metrosexual people I knew in my teen years.
They spasm at the very mention of Sarah Palin. So I defend her often, by linking to or 'liking' the articles that refute her post-Loughner accusers.
It makes them only more deranged. I giggle.
But then I remember it isn't funny. An innocent person is accused of fomenting hatred and inciting violence. A mentally-ill man is ignored by his local elected peace officer, and his sworn deputies, who could have initiated court proceedings against him. He could have received treatment; at the very least, he could have been kept away from firearms.
No, it isn't funny. And it isn't about a former governor of Alaska either. Nor about talk radio.
I take some comfort from the observations that the psychotic's target, a legislator, lives and struggles to recover; the sheriff, whose badge clots with the blood of the psychotic's victims, may answer for his failures by facing a recall; the nation seems to reject idiotic calls to punish the weapon. Some comfort, not much.
I also think of the torture that the shooter must have felt, years ago, as he sensed that his grasp of the world was failing. The greater torture of realizing that people around him notice that he has changed, but have done little or nothing to help him. What of the abandonment, the isolation, as friends, classmates, employers, even family gave up on him?
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