Probably many people were as sickened as I was to hear of the massacre in Virginia Tech and not all that surprised to discover that the killer was mentally ill.
On the one hand, the US makes it ludicrously easy for anyone with the money to buy powerful weapons and ammunition, and on the other pours out the sanctimonious sympathy and mourning whenever such events occur. By appealing to some almighty, and of course mysterious, guiding hand, the government passes the issue back to the relatives and friends of the victims. They have to try to make sense of the killings in the context of some supernatural, omniscient being, apparently in charge of everyone's destiny.
The old philosophical problem of causality and free will comes to them with a vengeance. By using Christian faith as some kind of palliative, the government deflects attention away from their lack of volition, instead appealing to the mysterious ways of some mythical being.
In the real world, the events in Virginia Tech are tragic but caused. A mental patient had inadequate treatment and in his derranged state of mind, was able to arm himself sufficiently to commit mass murder in a matter of minutes. That didn't have anything to do with any supernatural power - it was down to the mental health treatment given to that disturbed young man, and the ludicrously easy access to deadly weaponry.
Churches will be calling on people to forgive the killer. It would be far more productive to focus attention on the rational causes of the events, and take action to stop it happening again.
But the US is a pseudo-democracy based on one dollar, one vote. And lobbying money is very powerful. There will be the usual hand-wringing, and then it will slip from the news, again, until the next time.
