From my journal: An interesting comment by novelist Paul Theroux: "There is always a shiver of satisfaction that the smugly voyeuristic public feels when marginal people kill each other, when a boxer dies from a lethal punch, or when the corpse of the unwelcome boat person is revealed by the ebbing tide. It is the rush of the spectator at a cockfight, for the faceless struggler has not character beyond his struggle, no personality, and all anyone cares about is the outcome—the loser is indistinguishable from the winner. Mexican farm workers suffocating to death in a box car, prison inmates clawing each other to death, vengeful mobsters, furious gays—such murders arouse little emotion. You don't feel that their distress places you in any personal danger. They asked for it."

I don't like Theroux's observation because it is too close to a truth I see in myself. How little I have ever heard about the words of Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" I guess, from a Biblical standpoint, ...