Bing, bang, boom...

As if on cue, three more NYT columnists professional opiners weigh in on our latest national tragedy. (Some trends are more predictable than others.)

Charles Blow:

Slowly, but steadily, these bigots are slithering from beneath their rocks, armed and deadly.

Bob Herbert in the collectively titled "The Way We Are":

The truth, of course, is that there is nothing aberrational about hatred and murderous violence in the U.S. They are two of the most prominent touchstones of the culture, monumentally tragic flaws that have permeated the nation’s history from its earliest moments and that plague us still today.

Americans kill each other at roughly the rate of 16,000 a year! From racial violence to family violence to gang warfare to street crime to mass murder — the blood never stops flowing.

The white supremacist crowd is up in arms, literally, in large part because the tide has turned against them. In addition to the presence of Mr. Obama in the White House, racism and anti-Semitism are no longer tolerated as overt factors in American life. And demographic trends show whites becoming a steadily smaller percentage of the overall population.

But we should not pretend that things are better than they are. Racism is still a powerful force in the U.S., so powerful that the president, an African-American, is barely willing to mention race unless he absolutely has to.

Judith Warner:

And though he’s an outlier — disturbed, deranged, disavowed now by many who share his core views — his actions really can’t be viewed in isolation. As was the case with Tiller’s murder, which followed months of escalating harassment and intimidation at abortion clinics, von Brunn’s attack on the Holocaust museum has to be viewed as an extreme manifestation of a moment when racist, anti-Semitic agitation is rapidly percolating. White supremacist groups are vastly expanding. And right-wing TV rhetoric, thoughtless in its cruelty and ratings-hungry demagoguery, is helping feed the paranoia and rage that for some Americans now bubbles just beneath the surface.

I must live in the non blood bath part of the country, where individuals of all backgrounds come together to shop garage sales, organize summer activities for the kids, and worship together (Catholic churches are a bit more integrated than many religious services, I hear).

I wonder if the NYT columnists regularly mix with others and have picked up these divisionary vibes there? Perhaps more likely though, they are merely responding to what others have written, and thus their conclusions about "The Way We Are" as personified by most Americans today, is a bit ... off.

I'm betting so. Or maybe I just travel in good circles. Because I don't see a nation of haters out here, and a few bad eggs need not spoil the batch. Collective guilt, or blame, can have it's place surely, but not here in America. Not now. Not based on the recent acts of individuals acting alone...

Both Mr. Herbert and Mr. Blow today quote Dr. King. I hope it's not presumptuous of an American woman with fair skin to quote his line that I believe is most in need of being repeated these days:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Lest we forget.