I opened the newspaper this morning to yet another story of an ordinary young man doing what used to be an extraordinary thing (in a public place).
A 20 year-old man with AK-47 walked into the Garden State Plaza mall in northern New Jersey late Monday night, terrifying shoppers who saw themselves as soon-to-be victims of yet another mass shooting. They were wrong. The young man had no intention of taking their lives, just his own. His body was found early Tuesday morning around 3 a.m. in the back corridors of the mall. A very private act in a very public place.
“He was just one of the kids who lives in the neighborhood, a very nice young man,” a neighbor is quoted as saying. An average, ordinary, normal young man.
A few days ago, I opened the newspaper to news of a similar story. A young man entered the very public place of Los Angeles International Airport with an assault rifle and killed a TSA agent there.
The alleged gunman showed no warning signs, his former college roommate is attributed with saying. Another average, ordinary, normal young man.
Is this the new normal?
(On a related note, in the city of New York, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 6 to 1, voters yesterday elected their first Democratic mayor in two decades. How normal is that?)