Looking around this fair country of ours, I can't help but notice an

increasing lack of national pride. Nobody stands up and celebrates the

things that make America great. People are always jumping on any bandwagon

that stands to demoralize th

e nation in the eyes of its citizenry, but very rarely do we recognize the

little things that make us who we are as a culture. Such minor details as

hamburgers, french fries, bar-b-que and ice cold beer are generally not

thought to play an important role

in our identities as Americans. Traffic delays, bigoted politicians and

corrupt corporate officials are always the subject of public scorn, despite

the fact that they represent defining characteristics of who we are. A wise

man once said that a society is

measured by what it complains about. Personally, I believe that the true

nature of a society is measured by its killers, which is exactly what makes

Mark O. Barton so damn funny.

Mass murderers are so American. Hell, if there's just one thing we do well

in this country, it's producing killers. Now many of you will surely point

out that there are mass murderers worldwide. This is not in dispute.

However, the type of person who w

alks into a brokerage firm on a sunny Thursday afternoon and starts

plugging away indiscriminately is most certainly an American. Mass

murderers in other countries tend to have causes, or some other relevant

point to their actions. In the United States we

have only an abundance of psychos with broken reality buttons. Ted Bundy.

Charles Whitman. These were not men who served a higher calling. These were

not men who romanticized their actions with fancy ideals. These men were

simply insane. They weren't mar

tyrs serving a higher calling, they were either psychopaths, republicans,

or in Bundy's case, both. Make no mistake, however- they were both one

hundred percent American.

After Barton's happy little jaunt through downtown Atlanta on Thursday,

every psychoanalyst with a press pass was trying to explain his actions.

They were blaming society, they were blaming guns, and they were blaming

the collapse of American values. I

n other words, they were blaming all of those things that make America

great, instead of focusing on the actual cause of Barton's rampage: the

fact that he was a total, raving psychopath.

Somewhere along the line, people in this country forgot that sometimes

things occur without any rational explanation. Mark O. Barton wasn't a

victim of the system, nor was he a good man pushed over the edge by

circumstance. Mark O. Barton was nuts. He

was probably born nuts and he sure as hell died nuts. This is what people

have a hard time coming to grips with. We as a society have developed an

inability to believe that bad things happen without any good reason. I hate

to break it to all of you, but t

here a great many things in this world that happen without reason, and mass

murders are just one of them. You can stand around placing blame all day,

establishing theories as to the cause of such tragedies, but it will never

get you any closer to the trut

h. Because there is no truth. No one will ever know what was going on in

Mark O. Barton's head before all of this happened, and I personally think

that's a good thing.

So why do we do it? Why do we feel the need to break everything down to

its component parts and probe for answers? It's all a matter of control.

People like to believe that there is a natural flow to the universe. They

like to think that everything wil

l be fine if they adhere to several logical and practical modes of

behavior. People like to think that they are entirely in control of their

own lives, and the idea of someone being born into the world with an innate

blood lust totally destroys their worl

d view. Not that this is a bad thing, but it is necessary to have a little

bit of reality in the mix. We have to be able to accept that there are bad

people in the world who do horrible things, but we also need to sleep at

night. Somewhere between idealis

m and paranoia lies the state of mind which allows us to absorb the

terrible things in the world without losing sight of all the good things.

We may never be able to eliminate crazy people, but we can keep them from

controlling our lives. Or we can drink

heavily, which creates an entirely different set of problems.