The meme has been floated recently that there is an element of religiosity in the discourse surrounding the Obama camp.  A website has gone up, for example, that asks "Is Barak Obama the Messiah?"  People on DK and elsewhere have naturally wondered whether the site is a spoof, or whether the meme it floats is a sly smear from the Clintonites.  It's neither.  The site makes its argument based on a copious number of quotes, and, based on the evidence it presents, I think its conclusion is pretty undeniable.

But, so what?

Religious sentiments have formed a part of the campaigns of nearly all of the nominees in this election cycle, Republican and Democrat.  Hell, Huckabee was a preacher, and the only nominee that was unmistakably not religious was a principled socialist, as pasty and little as he is fiery, with a wife so hot and younger than him that he'll never need the bible for the rest of his life.  So the question is, Why have religious sentiments penetrated so deeply into this campaign?

I like Ames's work.  It's funny and often very insightful.  He gets attacked a lot because he lives and thinks outside middle-class morality.  More power to him.

Judging by the student descriptions of NIU that Ames merely communicates in his essay, NIU really is a depressing, shitty university.  But that is not what Ames's main point is in his article.  

If anybody had bothered to read what Ames says, they would have come across what is surely one of the most compelling explanations of these now commonplace school shootings:  It is the environment that produces these killers, not mental illness, or drugs, or break-ups, or anything else.  Ames states the obvious truth that everyone else wants to keep denying: that the American workplace, high school, and university have become cold, alienating, and brutal places that drive average people to desperate acts of revenge.