…since the gruesome tragedy at Virginia Tech. I’m writing this installment from within line-O-sight of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle office, where another Deranged Loner Male (DLM) went on a destructive rampage last July, one of two fatal DLM attacks in Seattle that year.

All week, pundits and bloggers have asked how come this country not only breeds DLMs but attracts them from far-off lands. I could say a lot of things about this that don’t really matter, just like many of the pundits and bloggers have.

I could say we need more familial love and social bonding, but that would be trite.

I could say we can only stop guns with more guns, but that would be false. (And trite.)

Perhaps all I can say is this is a long-term thang.

America’s “culture of violence” ain’t going away by itself, and it ain’t going away anytime soon. It’s ingrained in the very fiber of our nation’s identity, from Wild West bad men to Southern lynch mobs to Northeast urban gangs; from bloodfest movies to pro wrestling to the verbal “shots” doled out by insult comics and talk-radio bullies.

But censoring video games and comic books won’t prevent the development of more DLMs. Indeed, the culture of repression, that oft-ignored symbiotic partner to the culture of violence, might be a more direct cause in DLM-festering. It’s repression that does a lot toward turning shy outcasts into seething would-be avengers. It’s self-repression that helps cause DLMs to lose affinity with the rest of the human species.

So let’s stop harassing the misfits. Let’s invite the lonely and the forlorn to share solace and comfort wherever it can be found–in music, in nature, in art, in everything beautiful and warm and prosocial.

Yeah, like that’s gonna be easy. Remember after the Columbine shootings, when school administrators around the country sought to track every bullied and put-upon non-jock boy, so these boys could be bullied and put-upon with official sanction?