This is a gun.
If you're not crazy, they're all kinds of cool.
If you are crazy, we've got a problem.
How do I define "crazy"?
That's where I'm faced with a dilemma.
See, I live in a culture that encourages people not to concede to the rational - like believing a man who walked on water watches over our lives, and may even talk to us.
Is that crazy?
Then there's the idea certain humans possess magical powers, say of redemption, like Westerners did Bob Dylan and The Beatles, and like The Beatles did the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi from the East, in turn.
Was that crazy?
Our lives are overflowing with asinine ideas people still insist on - including discredited ones.
Is letting that happen crazy?
We're not the rest of the world.
Americans are supposed to be different.
We're supposed to be stripping away the fraud that defines the hardships of other people's lives.
Instead, we treat it as a show.
In such a culture, the military couldn't stop the Washington shooter for being crazy, any more than society can stop Jenny McCarthy - who's killed way more people - using different means.
Even with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the shooter's beliefs are no stranger than hers, or many others.
This is our culture.
They call it the NewAge and, as a society, it's "the path" they've chosen.
The one that says the Washington shooter deserved to die and Jenny McCarthy is a star of television and publishing - despite being identical in beliefs, actions, and crimes.
That's how I define crazy.
And, I think, things will start to work out again - and fewer people will die - once we commit ourselves to curing it,...
