A friend who optimistically believes every cloud has a silver lining hopes the tragedy at Fort Hood was merely the work of a volunteer in the Insane Clown Army and not a terrorist attack on an American army base in our supposedly safe homeland. This struck me as symptomatic of the age we've entered; call it the Reality Show at the End of an Era. In the land of the free and the home of the brave the best we can hope for is a demented mass murderer because the alternative is too frightening to face.