Our Sympathies

Are with die Bevölkerung des Deutschlands, who have had a horrific school shooting. Where Columbine was thirteen plus suicides, this was seventeen plus suicide in a much more compact nation, where das volk's identity is going to be seriously torn. The NYTimes makes a good note of the fact that this is the worst case of random violence since World War II, when about fourteen million innocent people were slaughtered for reasons more unfounded than this evil youth's vendetta against his school's teachers. Now, I am sorry to bring up this touchy subject at a time of national grief in das Vaderland, but I would respectfully warn Germans not to get a victim complex out of this; that would only lead to international blunders. Incidentally, my professor mentioned exactly that sort of blunder after class today: the Bundesrepublik offered to send its troops as a buffer zone between Israel and the Palestinians. Good intentions, but German checkpoints in Israel? Uh-uh. So again, sympathies are with you, Germany, and I honestly think that you are the most like America of any continental European country, and having experienced this sort of thing before, we kinda know how you feel. May God heal your wounds.