with beards and carrying lighted bombs. Today Anarchists are clean shaven and come
from the Rabid Right, like Timothy McVeigh who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah
Building in Oklahoma City, and Norwegian, Anders Breivik, who set off a bomb
in Oslo, then shot and killed 76 teen-agers on Utoya Island.
After capture, Breivik said that he had expected to die. Many who turn guns
on their school mates or fellow workers, end by putting a bullet into their own
brain. A death wish accompanies each horrifying act.
People can sink to low points in their lives such that ending it seems the only way out. Most recover but live on in the knowledge that suicide is conceivable, and that some might opt for it and decide to take others. A death wish can be a deadly consequence of the disease called clinical depression, which is treatable. But if it explodes into bombings and
shootings, it is too late.
The overwhelming reaction to the tragedy in Norway has been shock and
sadness. An exception is Glenn Beck, who insanely compared the teen-age victims
to Hitler Youth. Beck shows symptoms of wrestling with own death wish, not by
shooting with a gun, but by shooting off his mouth. He needs help. If he doesn’t
get it, one can only hope that shooting off his mouth is the only shooting he will
ever do.