Each of our lives is bracketed by two events, one celebrated, the other mourned, both violent by nature. Between these two allegorical points, our paths meander or race swiftly to our ultimate destination. Few arrive without the mark, in memory or flesh of some brutality received or committed, intended or random, along the way. Violence is drama.
Violence is metaphor.
The murder of Abel. The passion of Medea. Violence is entertainment. The Three Stooges. We may be, as Rich Frankel cites in his essay in this episode, in the midst of a Golden Age , but we also live under a threat of mass destruction, and with the memory of massacres, holocausts , mass starvation, and monumental acts of terrorism .