Anyone can be wise in retrospect

Tragedies like that which occurred in Minnesota this week are properly a cause for reflection on what might have led to them and what might be done to avoid similar things happening in the future. It is hard to know how to react to such superficial discussions as that which appeared prominently in the New York Times today. On the one hand, journalism is superficiality. The roots of wars are summed up in a few paragraphs precisely because no one has the time to read a book on the background to every media article they see.
On the other hand, sometimes the point is missed to such a degree that it should be the cause of great concern to those who care about where our societies are heading.
After the event, the newspapers can do little but wonder why no one saw the (retrospectively) "obvious warning signs." Of course, if one looks hard enough, one will always conclude that "The clues were all there."
The reason such a treatment is worrying is twofold. Firstly, the isolation, depression, loneliness and general failure to "fit in" experienced by so many (most?) teenagers at one time or another increasingly becomes viewed not as a function of the necessarily difficult process of adjusting to and coping with dramatic changes in ones social environment and physical and psychological state, but as an indicator that someone is so different, so "anti-social," so incompatible with the world around them that they are dangerous, and must be restrained to protect themselves and others.
Of course, there are extreme cases in which this is true, which is why such tragedies happen. But by identifying any behaviour which falls outside the realm of "normality" as a "warning sign" of imminent danger, it is easy to induce such fear - hysteria? paranoia? - among concerned parents that they are moved to monitor every moment of their child's life, every interaction, everything they write, draw and say and to read grave messages in to anything they do not percieve to conform to normal behaviour.
Such a process, I would venture, can be as harmful, on an individual and (perhaps more importantly) collective scale, as total neglect and disinterest.
The second reason we should be worried by such stories is that they limit their enquiry in the strictest terms. For consumers of this kind of journalism, no consideration may be made of the implications of a general pattern of, say, gun violence that indicates far higher levels in the USA than in other societies. Because everything is individualised and personalised, the wider factors which encourage a growing trend of violence are ignored. By this process, there can be no consideration of the possibility that a less invasive concern for adolescents might reduce the overall level of violent crimes. The possibility that socio-cultural developments in a particular society make such tragedies more likely to occur can never be considered within this framework of inquiry.
There is of course, a natural aversion to "letting criminals off the hook" by allowing them that cliched escape-clause "but it's society's fault." This is understandable enough, as designation of responsibility is important, in both moral and social terms. But none of this can mean that if we are interested in reducing the levels of crime we have to suffer (from burglary to terrorist attacks) then it is a good idea to extend our explorations of what causes it as widely as we can, and acting on the results. Nor should we so easily dismiss the possibility that a crime-free world is top of the agenda for those who we entrust to manage our social affairs. Other considerations come in to play, and can only be stopped by close examination of the hierarchies of power, what drives decision-making in society, and demands for radical change if we find (and I have a feeling that most of us will) that we don't like the look of what we uncover.