A couple months ago, in the midst of personal chaos, I went for a job interview. I was a nervous wreck and the interviewer could tell. She told me to "not be nervous." I painted a picture of myself and my situation that was much rosier than the reality - I didn't tell her I'd experienced a nervous breakdown, that I was without a home, any of that.

It was a painful wreck during much of it but a connection was built. Towards the end of it, I was in her car and we started discussing the world. "It's a very strange place. The world we live in."

"I sometimes wonder if it's real," I replied.

"Oh, it's real all right but it doesn't feel like it sometimes."

The world is obviously changing really, really fast - faster than most people likely know how to respond to it. All sorts of things that we assumed were just the way things are have been turned upside down. (Remember a world where the president was always a distant, out of touch white man and "violent crime" was synonymous with the inner city?)

It doesn't make much sense but, when you settle yourself down and really look at it - it makes perfect sense.

We are seeing the world as it really is.

There was a book that was published for children several years ago called Who Was That Masked Man Anyway? The main character is fascinated by the war that's going on and when a soldier comes to town, he explodes with excitement. It soon becomes obvious that the soldier doesn't want to talk about the war with him. The kid can't understand this - he's a war hero, he's fought the Nazis, and so on. Why wouldn't he want to talk about something so awesome?

Well, the soldier had seen what war really is. He saw his friend's bodies torn apart by gunfire, he'd seen bodies stacked high in concentration camps, he'd felt what it felt like to really think one was about to leave this world.

A lot of people have a lot of fantasies in their head and it may be that recent events are just making those fantasies burst in to flames. The Second Amendment is based on a fantasy world of being a soldier/cowboy/etc. defending one self against crooks on the street or in the government. The real world has shown that real people have caused real bloodshed with real guns that were really obtained legally.

Likewise, most of these shooters have some sort of silly psychological diagnosis - usually based on zero evidence besides the parent thinking that some of their child's behavior is strange. These evidence free diagnosis are then treated with medication which doctors admit they have no idea the properties of.

We play Russian Roulette with fantasy and appear surprised at the end result.

On his show, David Letterman said something to the effect of, "I don't know who in this day and age would enjoy watching violence." It may be that in previous days and ages, many were so immersed in a fantasy world that they didn't recognize what violence really is.

The real world is scary and the real world may actually kill you, rob you or all of the above. The real world may actually be insane, to be honest, and action and precautions have to be taken in order to survive in it.