What are we supposed to do with all this? Every second day seems to bring some fresh outrage, "happening now" on cable news and pinging onto our phones before we've had a chance to digest the last horror. An informed citizenry begins to feel like Lucille Ball at that assembly line that keeps picking up speed, except nobody's laughing: in the space of 12 days, Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, Dallas, Nice, Turkey, then Baton Rouge again.
And still visible in the rearview mirror is Orlando, receding with its ambiguity intact, yet somehow no longer confusing. A few weeks, plus a well of feeling, made it possible to comprehend that a mass shooter, a homophobe and a terrorist can exist in the same person, no matter what he calls himself. The…