A couple of old Russian guys wearing baseball caps

Some of the best people we know are people who spend their lives being critical. This does not mean they're negative--most of them are among the most positive people we know--but that they think and feel their way through things and come to a position, a stance, a way of being in the world without being afraid of expressing themselves.

They don't have an answer for Paris, other than to say that this has all happened before during some other era and at some different venue, nor does this position prevent them from looking deeply enough into the origins of the conflict to be able to empathize with both the perpetrators and the victims.

What is the real problem, they always ask, let us find the real problem and then we'll have at least a chance to come up with an answer that isn't mean-spirited, shortsighted, or even worse, magical.