Glad to see someone has said it

Christopher Hitchens has the cajones to say what should have become patently obvious by now: we are not one. We are not united in grief. Bad things can happen in the world without affecting us personally.

What, for instance, is this dismal rush to lower the national colors all the damned time? At times of real crisis and genuine emergency, such as the assault on our society that was mounted almost six years ago, some emotion could be pardoned. But even then, the signs of sickliness and foolishness were incipient.... If we did this every time, the flag would spend its entire time drooping.

He goes on to point out a quandary now faced by, of all people, the Russian trade mission, which lowered its flag after the Virginia Tech incident, only to have former Russian President Boris Yeltsin die in the middle of their solidarity. Oops. Bad timing on Yeltsin's part, dying within a week of a random violent act.

When my grandfather died, I noted here that it seemed obscene that the world kept on going, but that is one of the great lessons of grief: life has to go on in spite of any personal pain. Nothing teaches you that you are not the center of the universe quite like having everything go on like nothing is wrong while you are devastated. Our increasingly constant orgy of grief, moving from one tragedy to another, commemorating anniversaries and locations until time and space is one giant, constant memorial, robs people of this important demonstration of their place in the cosmos, while cheapening the grief we are supposed to be sharing.