We tried to get into Bowling for Columbine day before yesterday, but couldn't get in: huge lineups in Vancouver BC. The pre-coverage suggested that Moore's thesis for the enormous (relative to Canada & Europe) number of homicides in the US was that Americans are basically a fearful people. That sorta makes sense to me in terms of the big history - a succession of things to fear from the Yellow Peril, the White Slavers, the Communists, the Alien Agitators, and now the Terrorists and the Iraqis (what did the Iraqis ever do to the US?). Here's a question for Americans: do you think this is true, that there has always been a fear of the Other? Is there anywhere in the country where people don't routinely lock their doors, cars, etc. (which my family pretty much don't do here)? Surely there was a time in the US where folks were more relaxed about these things?

The local paper suggested that one cause for the strings of murders like this one is military training. An "expert" (David Grossman), "a former US military psychologist who helped develop programs to train new recruits to become more effective killers said that the key to military training lies in breaking down the natural human aversion to killing in a process he calls "disengagement". Once this aversion has been removed, it never comes back, and can make it easier for former soldiers to become murderers. 'The ability to watch a human being's head explode and to do it again and again - that takes a kind of desensittization to human suffering that has to be learned', (he) said...."   Is there anything in this, former US soldiers?