Unavoidably, the Nice Tragedy Affects Politics in the U.S.

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on July 15, 2016 Tragedy strikes again, this time in the south of France. The blood­shed in Nice was just as hor­rif­ic as the as­saults in Par­is last Novem­ber that killed 130. The Nice at­tack was spread over a much lar­ger area that the one at the Pulse nightclub in Or­lando last month, when 49 in­no­cent people were killed, and it was far worse than the Janu­ary 2015 at­tack on the of­fices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, when 12 journ­al­ists were killed. In some ways, the Bastille Day at­tack was re­min­is­cent of the Bo­ston Mara­thon bomb­ing, when people came to­geth­er in a spir­it of cel­eb­ra­tion, an oc­ca­sion chosen by the ji­hadists be­cause it was spe­cial and offered the twis­ted pro­spect of mass cas­u­al­ties. What’s so dis­tress­ing is that these events of un­speak­able hor­ror are be­com­ing so fre­quent that un­less they dir­ectly af­fect us, our loved ones, or our ho­met­owns, the peri­od of shock and mourn­ing lasts a little less each time. Numb­ness sets in more quickly. As dis­taste­ful as it most cer­tainly is,