Our take: The world of today is riddled with chaos and evil. Incidents like the shooting in Aurora, Colo., show that evil acts are easy to perpetrate. This article by Jeffrey Weiss delves into why evil is so prevalent in our society and discusses why there are villains but no superheroes to save the day.
Here is one lesson from Friday's Colorado theater massacre: superheroes are fantasy but supervillains are not.
Less flippantly: we live in a era where it is infinitely easier to commit transcendent evil than to perform remarkable good. This is only the latest in a series of episodes that demonstrate the malign power unique to our times. The 9/11 attack. The Columbine killings. The Fort Hood shootings. Choose-the-bombing with the terrible details of blameless dead and wounded from too many cities anywhere in the world.
If news reports are right, this particular nutjob took his inspiration from the 2008 Batman movie The Dark Night. Most of what made that a great film was the late Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker, a decades-old nemesis of Batman in the comics.
Read more about A day without superheroes on Real Clear Religion.
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I often ponder why the deaths in Aurora matter so much more than those in Damascus. Geography plays into it, of course, but are we not all human, or gods children, or somehow share more in common than not? I know I'll never have all the answers. More..
Will anything come of this? Probably not. People don't believe those who can do something will. They know the forces around the politicians use campaign contributions to keep a lid on any protest and let the memories die until the next More..