Insanity is not just a metaphor in this case. It appears to describe the actual situation. People die in some mass shooting staged for maximum spectacle — schoolchildren die, healthcare workers die, TV reporters die, sorority girls die; it’s hard to keep up — and we walk through our meaningless ritual of lamentation, without quite telling ourselves the truth about what is happening and with little or no belief that anything will be done to prevent the next one and the one after that.
Perverse as the comparison may seem, America’s gun problem has something in common with the Israeli-Palestinian standoff that has produced a similar level of blood and tears. In both cases we are obligated to pretend that some breakthrough that will change everything lies just beyond the horizon, while privately feeling sure that horizon will never be reached. In both cases, things probably have to get worse – a lot worse – before they will get better. In both cases, Mitt Romney’s famous canard about kicking the can down the road (even though Romney did not actually say that) offers the ultimate realpolitik policy option.