And here I am, safely in my house of bricks where I know anyone who thinks to molest me will pay. I can lock the doors, and the worst thing I have to deal with is a cat dying. Don't want to go to Africa. Everything I hear about it seems to reinforce my perception of it as worse than a Beltway Clusterfuck. "Who do we kill or mutilate today? What specious reason can we come up with for it?"

I know it isn't all really like that, but dang, these incidents keep cropping up. Then there's China. James! My smelling salts please! What a good and clever doggie!

Nope, I can't quite handle this easily either. But I agree that it is important that we recognise it even if there's little we can make our "representative government" do to help with underlying causes.